Mindless action

Rating: 5/10 (6 February 2010)

I've heard District 9 hailed as intelligent sci-fi. To me, this was the exact opposite. It was a movie that took a fascinating premise and then basically ignored every single aspect of that premise to present us with what amounted to a video game movie.
The movie actually gets off to a solid start. It opens in a mockumentary style whereby they introduce the whole scenario of the alien ship coming to a halt over the city of Johannesburg. We learn about how there were about one million alien refugees who were offloaded and eventually segregated from the human populace by placing them into District 9, where they live in squalid conditions. We then follow Wikus, our main character, as he runs a team whose purpose is to relocate the aliens to District 10. This section of the film is really interesting. We see firsthand how cultural misunderstandings can have tragic consequences. All sorts of interesting questions and possibilities about the aliens are raised.
Unfortunately, the film basically decides to ignore every single one of these interesting questions and possibilities in order to present us with a closing 45 minutes of some of the most dumbed-down, over the top, and mindless action sequences that you will ever see. Forget about the story, the aliens or any of the characters. Basically, what you've got is a video game movie - imagine Half-Life if George Freeman was wearing alien armour - complete with body parts flying everywhere and featuring one-dimensional characters who just seem to get stupider and stupider with each scene.
To be fair, the whole concept for the movie is so different that I have a feeling if they hadn't gone this route, this movie probably never would have gotten released. Still can't believe it got nominated for best picture though.