District 9, or, I’m Fairly Sure Nelson Mandela Wasn’t a Shrimp-Like Alien
District 9 is pretty damn close to universally liked, if not loved, at this point. It has an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 81 rating on Metacritic (classified as “universal acclaim”), the two most reliable movie review aggregators on the internet. It seems to be doing even better among the literati on Twitter. And when I say that, I mean that the negative reviews on the trending topic seem to be overwhelmingly along the lines of “jsut saw distrit 9 and it blew lolz”. And that’s not to say that District 9 is a movie only for smart people. I don’t think it is at all. I think that the people who seem to consider their opinions more seem to like it more. Whatever message that sends, I have no idea.
The fact is, one can like or love District 9 for a host of different reasons. It’s very politically charged, it does action extremely well, has superb special effects that blend in with the world, and has a great performance by the lead actor. I want to say that this movie becomes more than the sum of its parts, but I don’t think it does. Frankly, it doesn’t need to be, considering the sum of its parts is a politically charged, brilliantly staged, shot and acted action movie. With super cool aliens. Can one reasonably ask for anything more?
But I’ve heard people call it the best sci-fi movie of the decade. First of all, no. It’s not even the best sci-fi movie of the year – I would give that to little-seen Moon, which basically is Sam Rockwell taking acting behind the high school bleachers and making dear, sweet love to it. In fact, I would probably put Star Trek ahead of District 9 as far as sci-fi, though I think that the latter is a better movie. To crown a movie the king of the genre should probably require that movie to fulfill the ideals of the genre – in this case, I would say a film that immerses the viewer in another universe that differs from our own through some technological, spatial or temporal means. District 9 is filled with possibility and is absolutely refreshing in the way it tweaks the present day. But it really isn’t that immersing, and it shouldn’t be – the film is at its best when it is disorienting the viewer with its difference from how the world is, with that difference still being a believable world. I do think that District 9 is the best action movie this year.
Because this is a fairly late review for this movie, as I am but a lowly blogger with no media credentials for an early screening (and a mild case of writer’s block), I’ll go easy on the plot summary. By now, either you’ve seen the movie and are reading this review out of the goodness of your heart (bless you) or you’re going to be late seeing the movie and are tired of everyone spoiling it for you. It’s a chase movie – a total dickhead screws something up with the aliens he’s working with, and it makes him the most valuable thing on the planet. He becomes the key for the future of the conflict between humans and aliens (whose only name beyond “aliens” is the quasi-racist term “prawn”), except he’s still a little jerkface. When he sees what he is and what it means for him, he freaks out and just tries to find a way out of his problem. And if it means dicking over random people and aliens, then so be it.
And I have to applaud the filmmakers on that point. So many movies subscribe to the cliché of an unlikable hero or an antihero becoming a good guy when the action ramps up, ostensibly because the world around him has effected a change in his personality. Life doesn’t really work like that. Unless it’s an enormous revelation, an asshole’s going to be an asshole. In District 9, the dickhead, named Wikus van der Merwe and played by Sharlto Copley, even has a couple huge potential revelations like that, but for almost 100% of the movie, when he’s faced with a choice between playing for himself and being a team guy, he chooses the former. I think that’s a credit to the movie.
Sharlto Copley had no professional acting credits before this movie except for a bit part in a movie in 2005. He has some experience behind the camera in South Africa, but that’s it. He’s a left-field type of guy in a movie that needed it. A big name actor could handle the part of van der Merwe and run with it pretty well, but the character’s a faceless, regular guy and the film starts out in a documentary style. To keep that element of realism consistent, a no-name actor does the job better, as long as he can act. And Copley hits this role out of the park.
And I won’t say much about the ending, because it really is a great ending if you don’t know what’s going to happen. Action movies always benefit from a possible conclusion that could go either way, and they do that by setting up a world in which the bad guys can win. And since the bad guys are a multinational corporation, they have the odds in their favor. Couple that with the tone of this movie, which parallels South African real-life apartheid with the way the aliens are treated here (except that every human seems to at least be offput by the aliens, if they aren’t filled with hate towards them), and stories like that rarely have a happy ending. All I’ll say is that I want sequels, and the movie allows for that possibility.
District 9 doesn’t quite deserve the acclaims of “revolutionary” and “rebirth of sci-fi” that I’ve seen thrown around so far by some geek critics, and it certainly doesn’t deserve a ranking of 35 on the IMDb Top 250, but it could well be the best movie you’ll see this summer, and considering the other movies in theaters right now (ahem, G-Force, Shorts, Aliens in the Attic, G.I. Joe, Post Grad, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Ugly Truth), this shouldn’t have much problem staying in the theater to give you a chance to see it.
