Politically Correct, it's a great film - realistically it isn't

Rating: 3/10 (8 September 2011)

I could imagine following scenario: Producer: "How did you like the film?" Critic: "This piece of crap is the shoddiest, plagiarizing" Producer: " it's an allegory about apartheid, by the way." Critic stops dead in his tracks: " most amazing, beautiful movie I have ever seen! 10 Points!"
I don't know, perhaps age makes suspicious but I tend to approach movies where the largest part of the poster says, "Celebrity X presents a Y movies" with suspicion. Say, for example, if the poster exclaims "Quentin Tarantino presents a movie by director so-and-so", it's a virtually guarantee that the movie is guano. (Same goes for film-posters where the directors' name is spelled bigger than the actual title but that's another story).
So, what we got here? You're average run of the mill science fiction flick (of course PRESENTED BY PETER JACKSON!) that does a whole lot of borrowing.
Did I just say borrowing? Pardon me; I'm having too kind a day. Let's call the rose by its name then and call it outright stealing. Why, surely very few people have ever heard off or seen David Cronenbergs "The Fly" or "Aliens" or "Robocop"? "Rambo", "Transformers", "E.T." or even "Dance with the wolves", who'd every notice a young aspiring director 'borrowing' from such obscure flicks? But perhaps I'm reading too much into the film and those little borrowed moments are pure coincidence – and perhaps PETER JACKSON, who PRESENTS this film, has simply missed those parts.
To be honest, after having seen uncounted war world 2 and apartheid dramas, watching another SA apartheid film (even if it's thinly veiled as science fiction) provoked the same sentiment as watching another apologetic German movie about Hitler: utter boredom sets in. Alright, we all got it: apartheid was wrong, a great crime against humanity and all that  now, could we get on with something fresh, please? Pretty please?
But let's speak about the main-factor of the film: it's being PRESENTED BY PETER JACKSON! What makes this a Jackson film? Well, primarily gore – which is a good thing if you have a taste for cinematic gore but the blood and entrails here are obviously and painfully computer animated, it leaves the watcher with the same expression a meat-connoisseur might have after being presented with a tofu burger. Plus, there's a scene where a soldier is hit by a flying sheep – if that isn't a tribute to New Zealand, I don't know what is.
I'd give a couple of points but only because that is one of the few South African science fiction movies, so here goes for the exotic factor. Not to mention a bonus-point because this film was PRESENTED BY PETER JACKSON!
Oh, did I mention that this film was PRESENTED BY PETER JACKSON? You know PETER "Lord of the Rings" JACKSON? Now go run off, buy the DVD, buy the Blue-Ray and don't forget to dig in for the merchandize – or save your cash for a better flick.