Reviewed by: Chris Barsanti of FilmCritic.com
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Producers: Peter Jackson & Carolynne Cunningham
Writers: Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tachell
Actors: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Vanessa Haywood, Eugene Khumbanyiwa, Mandla Gaduka & Kenneth Nkosi
MPAA Rating: R
FilmCritic.com Rating = 3.0 out of 5.0 Stars
Not as smart as it wants to be but much cleverer than it could have been, District 9 is a kind of gross-out laboratory of sociologically-minded science fiction tropes updated for the post-Cloverfield generation. A first-contact scenario that eschews angelic choirs and glowing wonder for muddy corruption, the film threads enough thoughtful commentary into its whirligig media-fractured action plot to mostly make up for its lapses into cliché.
Bravely set far from the usual Hollywood stomping grounds — in Johannesburg, South Africa — District 9 imagines the city in an alternate pseudo-present where an alien mothership has been quietly, mysteriously hovering overhead for some two decades. A faux news documentary opening relates how the ship came to rest in the sky, going on to describe the eventual resettlement of its starving and confused alien passengers into the teeming titular refugee camp below. In the film’s present, humanity has moved past the thrill of first contact as well as its own generosity and settled into full-on speciesist hatred for the creepy and baffling shellfish-looking creatures derisively nicknamed “prawns.”
Read the full review by Chris Barsanti’s at FilmCritic.com.
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Just got home from seeing it and both the Mrs. and I really liked it. We are both hard Sci-Fi fans – not “gotcha” movies or gross horror stuff. The story was like a quality sci-fi short story, not just a lot of stuff blowing up. Very different from most of today’s sci-fi.
We both thought that the lead actor did a very good job of portraying a man in a very bad situation going through all of the denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance.
It is pretty obviously set up to leave a gateway for District 10, or some such but the sequel could go down several, very different, paths.
We had never seen any of the actors before except one government official type that only has 2-3 lines, so it was easy to see the characters and not the actors.
We would give it a 4 – 4.5 on 5 star scale.
Just saw it. I thought it was very well done.
I thought it was basically crap. The lead character was a joke. I couldn’t tell if Jackson was trying to do a comedy or just be stupid. This was a great story that could have been so much better on film.
This movie was far better, not to mention smarter, when it was Alien Nation. Nice references to The Fly (both original and remake) as well Aliens (the movie even has a Prawn Newt) and first two Terminator movies. Moon was far superior to the Corman movie writ large.