District 9

I'm a guy who is often disappointed with science fiction. The trappings of it are appealing to me--I love the covers of sci-fi paperback novels, or the plot summaries of sci-fi movies, but I often end up let down by the results. I think sci-fi is written by people who have very vivid imaginations but end up being not very disciplined writers, and the high-minded ideas end up unraveling the story.

District 9, to me, is perfect science fiction. It uses a fantastic scenario to illustrate something that is true to human nature without getting hung up on the philosophy of the issue. It's also very suspenseful and at times moving.

Directed and co-written by Neill Blomkamp, a South African, it is set entirely in that country, and that's an important aspect of the story. A spaceship has parked itself above Johannesburg. Earthlings fly up to it and discover starving, disoriented aliens, who are then housed in a refugee camp of sorts, which is called District 9. The camp, which grows to be over a million aliens, is rife with crime, and the native citizens grow to hate the newcomers, who are derisively called prawns because of their insectoid appearance.

Given the location, this is quite redolent of apartheid (the camp resembles places like Soweto), but I thought it was even more acutely similar to countries that have problems of unwanted immigration. The prawns, as the film begins, are to be evicted from the shantytown and moved away from the city into something like a concentration camp. This is handled by a huge and evil company, overseen by a bumbling bureaucrat, played by Sharlto Copley.

The first half of the movie is told entirely in faux-documentary style. We're given exposition by talking heads, as if it were a piece of investigative journalism, and also through surveillance camera footage and live news broadcasts. This has the effect of making the film feel current, but it also has a distancing effect that I found a little off-putting. Copley is such a buffoon that he seems to come straight from a South African version of The Office. When he comes across one shack during the eviction he finds a mysterious canister, and ends up getting sprayed with a viscous black liquid. After that, he has some serious medical problems.

I don't want to go to far with the plot after that, suffice it to say Copley ends up on the run from authorities, and heads back to District 9. There he forms an unlikely bond with one of the prawns, Christopher, who needs that canister to get back to his ship. At this point the film settles into a more conventional albeit exciting action/buddie film, with the two shooting their way into a top-secret lab (the aliens have some pretty awesome weapons that only they can use).

I should add that Christopher is played by no one--he, as well as all the prawns, are CGI creations. In the spotty history of this sort of thing, bottoming out with Jar Jar Binks, I believe I can say that this special effect work is the best I've seen. These creatures look absolutely real, moving among humans seamlessly. It's also a testament to Blomkamp and his team that they don't only look real, but solicit a great deal of pathos. Christopher and his son (a miniature creature who is some sort of scientific prodigy) are more real than almost any character in Inglourious Basterds. They aren't cuddly--these fellows look like overgrown crickets--but this may be the first film I've seen where you end up rooting for an alien species to kill all the Earthlings.

There are some flaws in the film. In addition to the excessive gimmickry of the documentary-style framework, I found the treatment of Nigerian characters, who are crime overlords of the District, to be insensitive, especially for a film about prejudice. The script also glides over some scientific questions--how does a liquid used for fuel also end up altering a man's DNA? If the ship is disabled, how does it manage to defy gravity and hover over the city?

Of course, science fiction is just that--fiction--and sometimes you have to just let it go. I'm perfectly willing to do that for this fine film, which is a rip-roaring adventure with just enough to make you think.