District 9 is for us today what movies such as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" were for the 1950s. Like those movies, "District 9" unquestionably a social commentary, and it does a fantastic job of driving the point home and giving us a great movie experience at the same time.
The movie feels like it's really divided into two parts. The first half is done in an extremely convincing mockumentary style. While many other movies in the science fiction genre may have done something like this, not too many have really dedicated this much time to it. *Minor spoilers--but nothing not shown in the trailer* The mockumentary explains how, in the early 1980s, an alien mothership from an unknown planet came to a stop over a South African city. Humans waited for months for the alien invasion to occur, but nothing happened. Finally they decided to break into the mothership, and what they found were tons of freezing, starving aliens. The aliens were taken and put into an internment camp (District 9--basically an alien slum) where they were treated very poorly and hated by humans. The company Multi-National United (MNU) was put in charge of the aliens. The mockumentary follows MNU field operative Wikus van der Merwe, almost thirty years after the aliens first arrived, as he attempts to get the aliens in the internment camp to sign an eviction notice in attempts to move them to another camp away from the city population, District 10. While on this mission, he discovers an alien chemical tube which he accidentally sprays himself with. The contents of the tube...well you're just going to have to see the movie to find out...
The documentary-style film done in the first half of the movie is extremely convincing, with nice shaky amateur camera work from the cameraman following van der Merwe, and other visual sources (including security cameras and home movies). They also include numerous interviews with different people involved with the alien internment, which really brings the documentary to life. It's all very convincing, and doesn't make the alien internment seem far fetched at all. The social commentary about real life slums and the treatment of people in them is always clear without being too over-the-top. The acting is all top notch, even if all of the actors are relatively unknown. The entirely CGI aliens are also very believable, and the movie does a good job of making them feel almost human. On a side note, Star Wars fans like myself will be quick to notice the erie similarities between the alien race from District 9 and the Geonosian race from Star Wars Episodes II and III, not only in the way they look, but also in their language and speech (Coincidence? Or is George Lucas pulling strings around the science fiction genre? You be the judge).
The movie takes a sharp and fairly unexpected turn towards the second half, from sci-fi mockumentary to sci-fi action movie. I was admittedly very nervous when I realized that the movie was going in this direction, as this could have easily completely ruined the awesome setup of the first half of the film. Luckily, I was not in the least disappointed. I can't say too much about it without some major plot spoilers, but I will say that the action is absolutely top notch and always intense. These are action scenes that make you sit up and pay attention, not lean back and sleep. It is also perfectly paced, as not one action scene drags on so long that it gets boring, unlike the CGI noisefest from earlier in the summer that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I wouldn't believe I would be making this comparison before I saw the movie, but I actually think that District 9 succeeds more as an action movie than Transformers, and District 9 has so much more going for it outside of the action.
This is one of those movies that's really hard to say a lot about without spoiling the plot, which is probably the main reason why I found that most people really had no idea what the movie was about before walking into the theater. But believe me when I say that this movie has all the makings of a true science fiction classic--social commentary, almost believable plot and characters, and an intense, somewhat disturbing ride the entire way through. This is unquestionably one of the best, if not THE best movie of the summer, and something that is well worth the price of admission for anyone above 17. It's thought provoking and mildly disturbing in all the right ways, and delivers a solid action movie on top of all of that.
I give this 5/5 stars.
