District 9 Review

District 9

A+

Alright let's start on this note. In my review of Avatar I said somewhere on the lines of this film has to be really really good to knock become a contender with Avatar for film of the year. I have to say now after watching this film that I'm conflicted on what my movie of the year is.

Well to the movie now, District 9 is an interesting take on human contact with aliens. The movie starts with an alien mother ship landing over of all places Johannesburg South Africa. After a few months of the ship just sitting there the army of South Africa go in and raid the ship and see what's up. They find 1 million malnourished and unhealthy aliens. They under pressure from the rest of the world create a camp for the aliens come to stay and eat. This camp due to weapons is now heavily militarised and then as soon as you know it it's a slum. Then revolts begin to happen and before long the alien affairs group of MNU is forced to move them to a new camp. Unfortunately though all the legality is a white wash and they take advantage of the aliens who are only "Prawns" beings who are not smart and have lost there leaders.

This is the first third of the film shot mainly in a documentary style with some cinematic portions thrown in there as well. This gets the entire deep back-story of the film introduced before we jump into the last to parts of the film witch are more cinematic and less documentary.

span style="font-size:12;"> The next two thirds are about the leader of the moving the alien project Wilkus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley). He has a lovely wife and a good job at MNU but isn't the brightest. While evicting aliens he finds a mysterious liquid while searching through an alien's shack. He accidently sprays the liquid at himself and begins a slow, painful, and gruesome transformation into an alien. He soon is captured by his own company MNU and attempts to use his now alien arm to use weapons. After finding out he can use weapons, they use him as an experiment. He (of course) dose not like this and runs and takes refuge in district 9. He joins an alien Christopher Johnson on a campaign to get the liquid back and try to get the aliens home.

The whole story is amazing and layered with lots of stuff to soak in. This is the probably would happen if aliens landed. It proves how mean we can be and what the evil things we have done during the ages.

This is a low budget film but you won't even notice. The aliens look amazing and the action scenes are both creative and look great. There is one scene that involves a meck suit that is my personal favourite action scene all year with multiple layers to it and amazing all out skirmishes. Just the pure creativity of this film is amazing from the documentary style at the beginning to the depth and the pure awesomeness of the action scenes at the end it is just amazing.

Just a note though this movie is 14a in Canada but I do not recommend it for a younger audience at all. The violence is extremely gory and they say the f word alone 150 times (give or take 2-3 and yes I actually counted watching this my second time through). Stick with the R rating in the US because the rating in Canada in my opinion is a bit light.

Overall District 9 is an amazing film that is bursting with creativity and depth. The message is strong, the writing is great and the action scenes for 30 million dollars are amazing. Overall this is by

far one of the best of the year and a contender against Avatar for film of the year.