Quote clever meets not-quite-satisfying
District 9 begins with a classic
science-fiction premise. A flurry of documentary-style interviews and
mock TV news footage recap the chaotic recent events: a giant alien
ship appeared over South Africa, and after months of watching it
hover silently, human soldiers cracked it open to see what was
inside. They found a large number of malnourished, human-sized,
insect-like aliens. The ailing creatures were moved en masse to a
holding camp called District 9, which has, in the twenty years since,
become a crime-ridden slum where black markets sell alien weaponry
and underground dealers import large quantities of cat food. The
aliens find canned fish delectable. They’re intelligent enough to
speak a language and build space ships, but on earth the “prawns,”
as the aliens are called derisively (they look like giant shrimp),
have become a societal burden.
When our not-quite-lovable hero is
finally alone with a friendly alien, you’d think he’d have a load
of questions. “Hey, where are you from? Why are you here? Why South
Africa? If you just need to get back to your (still hovering) ship so
you can fly away, why didn’t you do that earlier, when you were
still on the ship?” But our hero, like the film itself, is not the
least bit interested in those questions once the wheels are set in
motion. Instead he shouts, “Don’t fucking move! Don’t fucking
move!” or inquiries to that effect. A few late-arriving changes of
heart are unconvincing on all sides, and the film, which feels nearly
complete at 85 minutes, lacking only a smart capper, continues for
another brain numbing half hour. On balance, it’s a decent action
flick, at least as stimulating as the Terminator sequel that opened
the summer, but it’s a film that might have been a modern science
fiction classic if it had spent a little more time in the incubator.
That’s a fantastic idea for a
thinking creature’s action film, but in its rush through the
climax, District 9 favors loud blasts over logic. The two aren’t
necessarily incompatible, but asking for both in District 9 is like
asking the prawns and the humans to let bygones be bygones.
Unfortunately, it’s also clever meets
not-quite-satisfying. For over an hour, District 9 is fueled by an
explosion of creativity. It boldly gives us a lead character in Wikus
who looks and sounds like a jovial Aussie office wonk but who also
seems to be a raging racist. Or speciesist, I suppose. Acting on
behalf of a multinational corporation that’s been tasked with
controlling the aliens, he knocks on slum doors to tell the residents
to move or be moved, shooting any who spook him from the rear. Later
the film further complicates his situation in ways that harden but
also confuse the way he feels about the aliens, and the way they feel
toward him. We’re in Archie Bunker territory, here, except for all
the oozing fluids and bullet-pierced exoskeletons. The film
provocatively makes its aliens and their twitching mandibles
excessively disgusting, more like Brundlefly than E.T., so that
anyone who wants to side with these sentient creatures needs to have
strong enough moral principals to overcome the gag reflex.
In a series of witty interviews with a
human functionary named Wikus Van De Merwe, District 9 establishes
some obvious but critical similarities to our own world—as good
science fiction always does—from concentration camps and genocide
on the extreme end to immigration, xenophobia, poverty, asymmetric
warfare, and urban renewal on the softer side. The story weaves
together enough familiar elements that reviewers sound like they’re
playing a parlor game when they try to describe it: it’s The Office
meets Alien Nation. It’s The Fly meets V. It’s City of God meets
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Watch the
District 9
trailer: