Review: District 9

This was another sort of sci-fi movie. With a severe lack of clichés and filled with new and original ideas, it was extremely difficult to dislike this movie. It was action packed, it had a great story and, quite necessarily, had great animation.

Here’s what I liked:

The interviews in the beginning provided immense amounts of story, while only being a minor drain on the initial pacing. Midway through the interviews we start getting a lot of action and hints at the story. When the interviews end, the action really begins.

There was an unexpected third party in this movie that added immense amounts of action; the gangs. As the story goes Nigerian gangs moved into District 9 to get protection from the police, it became a sort of free-zone as only MNU could enter and by the time the movie happens the gangs were powerful. However they’ve spent much of their time acquiring alien weaponry, which is biologically encrypted to the aliens (like the Ancient technology in the Stargate series). So we don’t venture into spoiler land, we’ll end that there. Simply put, the story was great.

Special effects were simply amazing, but then for a mix of Peter Jackson, and Neill Blomkamp who worked for almost a decade in 3D effects (including Stargate and Smallville), this isn’t really surprising. The ‘prawns’ were perfectly made, but what really sold them was the uniqueness of everyone we saw.

As a credit to Neill Blomkamp, I wasn’t expecting to feel empathy and sympathy for the aliens from the beginning, but he sure managed it. I can’t say much without spoiling, however the ending was quite touching and made a great setup for a sequel.

What I disliked:

Not much honestly, the worst part in the whole movie was the slow opening. However, it was necessary. This movie wouldn’t have worked in the ‘Alien Invasion’ that didn’t happen when over a million starving aliens were transported to District 9. The fast-forwarded story given during the interviews was everything essential to the story that made this $30 million piece one of the best movies of last year.

Overall: 9/10

I would genuinely recommend this movie to anyone. It would have been nice to see a bit better pacing in the first 15-minutes, but virtually every Hollywood movie can butcher the first half-hour with boredom, so I’d say Blomkamp ended up ahead of the curve on that front.

This seriously isn’t a movie for pre-teens, but the R-rating given by the US is wholly laughable. It holds important messages in it that 13-16 year olds should be getting exposed to. However when the MPAA rated Billy Elliot (about a boy doing ballet) an R, I hope most American parents started ignoring the ratings and judged the films by their own criteria for their children.

With greatness across the board from the acting to the visuals, this is one everyone should watch. With an anti-apartheid message behind it that isn’t thrown in your face, it’s a good movie for a family with teens.

Judgement: Buy it.