Thank you Peter Jackson. Thank you Neill Blomkamp. Thank you to everyone who helped make this film possible. I'm speaking of course, about "District 9", the directorial debut from Blomkamp, a protege of Jackson, which has to be the perfect summer surprise and deserves to be a huge hit in every regard. If it does strongly at the box office this week and over the coming weeks, it will be a triumph for originality in Hollywood, and a well deserved one at that.
Let's face it, we've seen a summer that, even in its best moments, made the most money in tried and true formulas. "Star Trek" was a repackaging for the current generation, "Transformers" and "Harry Potter" were sequels to established hits, and "Wolverine" was a superhero origin story. So even though "Trek" and "Potter" were wonderful films that deserved their success, they still weren't bringing anything terribly new to the table. And that's where "District 9" comes in to save the day.
Adapted from Blomkamp's 2005 short film "Alive in Joburg", "District 9" takes us on a very different close encounter with the third kind. Instead of aliens arriving over New York or Paris or Washington with a mission, they've landed in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the landing is a total accident. They don't leave their massive ships for nearly three months, and when they are broken out, they don't wage war, but rather settle quite passively into a massive slum known as District 9. Of course, apartheid comparisons are obvious, but Blomkamp and crew are wise enough to let the idea remain present, without beating the audience over the head with any contrived "message". The first 45 minutes are built primarily on fake news footage, interviews, and security camera footage, yet it all feels strangely real. Once the introductory interviews are out of the way, we join a news crew following MNU agent Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copely) as he and other MNU forces (think of them as something like the Blackwater corporation...) announce to the alien residents that they are being relocated. Of course, this threatens to upset the chaotic that's been established over the past 28 years, including the rise of Nigerian drug/arms dealers. Yes, nothing is kept sacred in "District 9". Neither humans nor aliens get to the the "good race"; each side has plenty of good and bad, and it's here where the film soars. Wikus starts off as a typical MNU biggot but comes to see District 9 as something quite different...although to say too much of anything plotwise would be criminal. Let's just say that even when it devolves into its most conventional moments, there's still a tremendous force carrying the film along.
Perhaps one of the things that Blomkamp and crew do best is ensure that "District 9" is a movie that you "feel". They use closeups of the right sights, and the world they have created allows for more than a few icky moments, which, despite making you wince and squirm, only make the film hit you harder. I dare you not to be at least slightly unnerved at the hospital scene...so much so that I don't mind revealing that there is a "hospital scene". Much like "The Hurt Locker", "District 9" grabs you by the gut early and rarely, if ever, lets go. And of course, then there are the visual effects. Shot for a paltry $30 million, the film's digital inserts look marvelous and blend beautifully with their environments, enough so that you feel things when you see something bad happening to an alien. But the bigger surprise, yes, bigger than the quality of the effects, is Copely's performance. In what should have been nothing more than a "yeah he was fine with what he had to work with" role, Copely gives it his all, without ever feeling over the top. He, along with an alien who has taken the name of Christopher, give "District 9" a heart amid the harsh realism surrounding the events of the film.
Of course, and I hate having to say it, there are a few problems. For one, the villains in the film just seem to become "villians" without any moral dilemma considering Wikus' relation to someone high up in MNU. And even if we discard this, one of the "bad guys" starts to laugh evilly at Wikus as he closes in on him to "finish him off" at some point, and there are a few coincidences that upon closer examination are a bit much. But at the end of the day, with its stellar idea, strong impact, and generally fantastic execution, it's hard to deny that "District 9" is one of the most satisfying sci-fi films to come around in a long time...and to think that it's a purely original idea as well...that just makes it seem even better.
Grade: A-
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