District 9 [Blu-ray] [2009] [US Import]

Neill Blomkamps stunning directorial vision tells the story of a stranded race of aliens nicknamed prawns due to their appearance living in a shanty town named District 9. Attempting to relocate them to district 10 is MNU agent Wikus van de merwe brilliantly played by Sharlto Copley.

Abandoning the usual settings of Hollywood sc-fi and placing the film in the harsh slums of South Africa is a masterstroke. Also no celebrity names here, all unfamiliar actors but who still give solid performances. It's dark and moving with a story that is well told and that grips right from the beginning. A story which is almost saying that all humans are selfish driven by greed and vanity. Which is why this movie pulls no punches, hardly anyone comes out of it smelling of roses.

Blomkamp has managed to create aliens that are grotesque in appearance but yet display just enough feeling that made me care for their predicament something that the other humans in the Movie lack. The effects are genuinely good and don't look cheap with imaginative weaponry. No cheesy laser zappers here, just explosive firepower wait until you see what one alien gun does to a human Body.

The last third of the movie involves firefights and brilliant battle scenes with alien weaponry. Rarely in the sci-fi genre has a movie been so deep dealing with so many issues through prejudice, mans inhumanity and cruelness and large corrupt companies. Central to it is the superb performance of Copley and his bond with the alien Christopher. Blomkamp has fused a great story together and created a classic sci-fi flick that I enjoyed immensely.

It's rare at the moment to see a science fiction movie that isn't a remake, a cash-in, an adaptation, or a spinoff of another big success.

But "District 9" is not that kind of movie. Instead, the rarest kind of film -- a unique and original idea, handled in an intelligent manner, with no big name actors or flashy special effects. Director Neill Blomkamp instead creates a truly captivating sci-fi movie -- and by inverting the whole alien-invasion trope, Blomkamp also forces his audience to think. Hard.

Almost thirty years ago, an alien ship appeared over South Africa -- but it brought neither global destruction or salvation. When soldiers cut their way in, they found starving refugees who are now nicknamed "prawns."

Currently the aliens live as outcasts in District 9 while nations argue over them, and the company Multi-National United is selected to make their weapons work... which is not possible, because only alien DNA can activate them. Then during forced evictions of District 9, a typically callous MNU field operative named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) accidently sprays himself with a black alien fluid in a little lab. Unfortunately, it starts turning him into one of the aliens.

Unsurprisingly, the MNU wants the secrets of Wikus' changing body, and the corporation is not terribly picky about how they get it. He manages to escape into the only place where he has a chance of surviving -- the very alien slum that he was trying to empty, District 9. And his only chance of surviving and becoming human again lies with an alien scientist who is trying to reactive the hovering "prawn" mothership.

Segregation. Blatant discrimination (including a racist nickname). Poverty. Shanty towns. Large companies and countries who care nothing for the despised minority population. It's painfully clear what would probably happen if spooky insectile aliens were to land on humanity's doorstep -- and Neill Blomkamp pulls no punches in his allegorical examination of apartheid, alien-style -- with the poor "prawns" as the universal victims. It's a hard, gruesome story with painfully graphic violence (Wikus gleefully bombs alien eggs) but it really needs to be that way.

Blomkamp also presents his story in a unique way -- much of it is filmed like a documentary, though thankfully it has none of the sickmaking shakiness of movies like "Cloverfield" or "The Blair Witch Project." There are plenty of spliced interviews, documentaries and news footage, which are cloaked in a feeling of gritty, dusty realism -- the dark industrial mothership with its slimy interior, the dusty slum, and the poor aliens who basically scavenge through garbage to survive.

But the last quarter of the movie also evolves it into a slam-bang explosion-riddled action flick, without losing its focus -- there are some brilliantly gruesome scenes where the aliens turn against some human attackers, and Wikus even gets to kick butt anime-style in an alien battle-suit. If there's a flaw with this movie, it's the whole idea that humans wouldn't be at all afraid of aliens who are clearly technologically superior to us -- they have a freaking SPACESHIP that's been sitting over Johannesburg for thirty years!

It also has the virtue of the most alien aliens seen in ages -- they move, look, speak (click click!) and think nothing like humans, and they're slimy and kinda creepy looking. They have no grandiose plans or pretty sparkly technology. Yet Blomkamp infuses them with a sense of nobility and strength, and despite their insectile faces he makes you feel what they do after awhile.

It's hard to believe that this is Sharlto Copley's first acting role, because his performance is so strong: Wikus is a pretty despicable human being, who has fun killing aliens and ejecting them from their homes. It takes a physical transformation into an "other" to change his spirit as well. And Blomkamp lets us see the pain of his transition even when we don't like him (including a heartrending phone call to his wife). The supporting actors also provide excellent lesser performances, but Copley rules this one.

"District 9" is a brilliantly original, hard-hitting movie that wraps a timeless human failing in an alien skin. It's one of the best movies of the year thus far, and certainly a classic in the making.

A brilliant satire of South Africa and human nature generally; greed, callousness, cynicism, pragmatism; all are on display in corporate corruption, gangsterism, administrational hypocrisy and private pride, vanity and ambition . The casting was excellent, with real South Africans with real South African accents, idioms and mannerisms. The satire was razor sharp, cutting to the bone the peculiarities of South Africa, but even handed enough to be thoroughly human and thus applicable to any circumstances. The plot is unpredictable and gripping; the characters believeable, and the premise, once beyond the surreal sci-fi component, eminently plausible. The cinematography was at first confusing, being a mixture of documentary, home movie, news clip and straightfoward narrative cinema, but once over the suprise, it worked superbly in communicating the story in a 'total-cinema' way. Excellent film; the best this year.