What a great week to go to the movies in the UK. After the fairly terrible summer, the decent stuff that has been kept back for serious film lovers hit the screen. Inglorious Basterds and The Hurt Locker are still playing, while (500) Days Of Summer, the best rom-com in years opened on Wednesday. Now comes another highly recommended work that will please all those who love their action movies and have been left wondering if ever there would be a decent one ever made again (especially after GI Joe, Transformers 2 and Wolverine which were woeful to say the least). District 9, however, is much more than just another violent action movie.
It starts off brilliantly. A giant alien spaceship hovers over Johannesberg. Inside are an alien race brought down to Earth and confined within barbed wire walls in a slanty town known as District 9. the aliens, are not the intelligent, friendly types, but living in the slums have led them to violence and scavengers, being treated as outcast by the authories and people of South Africa, and taken advantage of by black market gangs. The government are not happy. They want to move these creatures, known by the locals as 'prawns' to another camp away from the populous. So armed soliders enter for the mass eviction, led by a geeky, racist office worker newly promoted by his father-in-law, a head of the coorporation who want to use the aliens for experiemntal purposes.
During the signing of the paper work, the office worker, Wikus, discovers a cannister which sprays into his face, and so begins a transformation that changes not only his outlook on the men and women who hate the aliens, but on himself.
I don't want to give too much away as to what happens, but this part sci-fi, part-horror, part action movie has plenty of ideas and a message about how the human race treats immigrants or those who are looked upon as different. Interesting that the film is set in South Africa, where only years ago the black community were almost treated the same by the whites. So not only a social statement, but it has some very dark humour as well as a humanity. Don't let all of this put you off, it is also very exciting and violent, and one of the best action filsm this year.
Peter Jackson part financed this low budget film and with help from his WETA effects team, the aliens look real; not your average cute aliens, but bug-like, foul creatures. They look terrific. The lead, complete unknown Sharlto Copley, is brilliant. Starting out as an annoying liitle erk, you eventually feel for this torubled man and what he goes through.
Director Neill Blomkamp keeps the pace moving, starting with a mockumentary and then moving into the heart of the action the same way that Kathryn Bigalow did in The Hurt Locker. once again, the use of the shaky camerawork is off-putting, as it makes you feel sick and you doo lose some of what is happening. The film is not perfect. The final battle scene goes on a little too long and the language becomes intrusive, but these are minor things.
It will keep fans of sci-fi action very happy and the more mature filmgoer just as happy. It is, without a doubt, the most imaginative, original film of the year. Bar none.
4/5
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