District 9: A Walk in Someone Else's Shoes

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2009)

There is one singular event that makes watching the same movie from the release in the theater and then again at the DVD release enjoyable, and that's simply still enjoying it. District 9 is one of those movies that will be talked about for years based on the technical merit, it's writing, and it political undertone of what really happened in Johannesburg. Writer and Director Neill Blomkamp did a superb job of blending his real-life events with realistic and fanciful science fiction to bring a story that will both bring into the light of what humans are capable of, and how we are capable of doing it.
The story itself is fairly straight forward, even with its small subplots that are meshed in seamlessly. Especially when you include that the movie is portrayed in a "fly-on-the-wall," cinema-verite style, while pushing documentary and hand-held, and general third-person, it gives the whole plot and main character an intense feeling of being a fish in a fishbowl: They have nowhere to run and are insubstantial to stop the rising tide that is about to come at them. Winkus, the protagonist of the story (Sharlto Copley) is working for an international company MNU, which bears a striking resemblance to NATO to help relocate an alien race known to humans as Prawns.
The Prawns have been stuck in Johannesburg for twenty years for reasons unknown, and in that time have lost their ability to get home. While they have been stranded on Earth, MNU has set up camps for them to live in which has become a cesspool for drugs, prostitution and violence. With humans getting fed up with Prawn occupancy in Johannesburg, MNU begins to move them out to another location outside the city limits. As a result, Winuks becomes contaminated an alien device, which causes him to turn into a Prawn as the movie progresses.
Now, as far as the rest of the plot goes, it flows well and seamlessly for the most part. I will say that for sections of where they take emphasis on the worse of Winkus' transformations, Blomkamp would break up the intensity with a sappy conversation to Winkus' wife, delaying the story with a feeble attempt to add another layer of sympathy for the man. Although it is nice to see he has some other goal to work for rather than just himself, truthfully it seems thrown in, especially once you notice how quickly his wife changes his mind.
Other than the slight plot hiccups, the rest of the movie works with surgeon-like precision. The greatest achievement in this movie was how the Prawns (who were all computer engineered) were able to interact and seemed to fit perfectly into the surroundings. The quality of the aliens blending so well into the foreground and background was ideal, and something that up till now, hasn't really been pulled off as perfectly. While it would have been nice to see during aerial shots of D- 9, to see more of the supposed two million Prawns, instead of shanty houses and burning rubbish.
The acting throughout the picture was justly topnotch. To interact and work with each of the imaginary Prawns, each actor did a remarkable job of making one believe it was there. Copley himself did a fantastic job, having to essentially spend the majority of his time with a Prawn and interacting with him like it was an everyday occurrence. In fact, Copley and the majority of the cast did a splendid job of playing into their roles, be it the interviewees for the supposed documentary of what really happened, the typecast role of military officer, or Copley who make you feel like he was Jeff Goldbloom reincarnate in The Fly.
Yet still the most stunning is how powerful the movie really is without people really comprehending. Blomkamp first got the inspiration for this movie with his original short Alive in Joburg. While that was more of a political piece as it was a short on how the government was handling the apartheid and the blatant racism for the people living in District 6 (otherwise known as Cape Town). This movie helped bring the issue to a broader light, along with expanding the issues of racism, which has plagued South America for years. Thankfully, Blomkamp also does the appropriate thing of keeping it low-key, letting the audience either realize his creative intent, or respectfully ignore it.
Even with its slight bumps, they are not enough to knock the coffee out of the holder. District 9 is not a movie you will watch every day, but it will be one that you can put in and appreciate for what it brings to the table, the story it tells, and the creative and imaginative intelligence behind it's creator.