“KICKING OUT ALIENS”
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt, Sylvaine Strike, John Sumner and Vanessa Haywood
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
MPAA Rating: R for bloody violence and pervasive language.
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
By John Delia
Quite interesting to say the least, District 9 grabs hold of it’s cool mind bending storyline and dishes it up with a lot of action. Although I had some minor misgivings on how the story played out, the movie entertained me in spite of its barely credible ending. If you are into fantasy films with a lot of action, do not care much for character build up but like a lot of computer graphics that sell the scenes, than take your ‘landspeeder’ to see District 9.
“Thirty years ago, aliens made first contact with Earth. Humans waited for the hostile attack, or the giant advances in technology. Neither came. Instead, the aliens were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The creatures were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa’s District 9 as the world’s nations argued over what to do with them.â€
â€Now, patience over the alien situation has run out. Control over the aliens has been contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens’ welfare — they will receive tremendous profits if they can make the aliens’ awesome weaponry work. So far, they have failed; activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA.â€
The head of MNU field operations appoints Wikus van der Merwe (Copley) to head up an operation to relocate the aliens. While visiting and delegating his authority on the space creatures he gets exposed to a virus that starts to change his DNA. When the MNU gets wind that van der Merwe can manipulate the alien weaponry, his bosses try to bring him in.
If you have seen the trailer for the movie you probably have a pretty good image of the aliens, crabby faced/insect like creatures. On the big screen they
are even more pronounced and for this I applaud the filmmakers. The aliens did not come across as some guys dressed up in special costumes running around causing mayhem, but sophisticated realistic looking creatures that are creepy yet likeable. It wasn’t hard for me to root for van der Merwe while he attempts to save them from certain death.
What did bother me, however, is that the United States for one and Brittan for
another are always sticking their noses into anything that generates media, and especially an incident of this magnitude. And even though this takes place some 30 years after the aliens have hovered over South Africa, I cannot fathom that the MNU was not made up of some other countries scientific geneses. It is just the South African Dutch who have been taxed with having to deal with the stranded cosmic travelers. Sorry this just bothered me so I needed to get it out.
District 9 does contain some very graphic violence and killing and with some off color expletives that do add credence to the movie, but the movie still should only be viewed by mature adults. Kids, you can go out and buy the action figures.
FINAL ANALYSIS: A good sci-fi thriller that makes fantasy a reality.(4 of 5 Palm Trees)