perfect summer film

Rating: 9/10 (16 August 2009)

I cannot say enough good things about this movie. It has everything a summer movie needs and has everything that a classic movie needs. It has fun explosion and violence galore with plenty of cringe moments. The pacing is impeccable and I have not seen an action film fit in so much character development without slowing down the movie at all. I love the direction choice with the interviews and cutting back to what seemed like a documentary crew, but that sense was quickly loss and it felt like an action film again. The weapons were sweet and the impact that they had really made me believe that people would go through a lot of effort to gain control of them. My favorite part of the movie was the fact that some of the reactions that the humans had to the aliens were so strong, but perfectly mirror the way other humans tend to react to one another in similar situations. The action was fun and the last third of the movie was filled with lots of fun. Some critics complain that the last third was just a standard action flick, but I must disagree and that is because of the lead actor. He pulled off a transformation that matches some of the best performances I have seen this year and he did without a single acting credit to his name. The minor complaints that I have are that the story does not always make sense as it does with a lot of science fiction movies. Now that I think about it most of the time I hate the shaky cam, but this time it did not bother me because it was not used over the top and nothing like what the Bourne movies do. The fact that this movie was made for so little money does not show for a second. The fact that they used real slums for most of the filming completely immersed me in the world extremely quickly. I love the use of dialog and how they were all able to communicate with each other, but never spoke each others languages. The kid at the end was campy, but since it worked so well I do not mind at all. I really look forward to what everyone involved in this movie can do in the future. This movie was so much fun and I cannot recommend it enough and this will probably be on of the movies I will buy on Blu Ray as soon as it comes out and make everyone watch it.