Movie Review: DISTRICT 9

This movie was such a mess, I don't even know where to begin.

Well, let's start with the obvious: How does a South African filmmaker get away with making an overtly racist, pro-apartheid film, and why does the world at large embrace it? And if you're going to ask "What do you mean, racist?", I say Open Your Eyes, People. The film deals with an oppressed group of aliens forced to live in a slum, and it's set in Johannesburg. In real life, Johannesburg is a place where an oppressed group of human beings--BLACK human beings--are forced to live in the largest slum on the planet. And here's the racist part: the film makes it clear that it best for everyone to keep the aliens living in squalor, because they are vicious, dangerous, mindless beasts. Carry that logic into the real world, and you have a shockingly racist piece of propaganda. (And even this allegory is muddled, since the oppressed aliens are immigrants, whereas the black population in South Africa was oppressed BY immigrants--Dutch and English. I hate flawed metaphors.)

In fact, not only are the aliens portrayed as mindless animals, so are the majority of black people in the film. The slum is essentially controlled by a Nigerian warlord, who trades the aliens cat food for their weapon technology. Oh, and from time to time he will kill and eat one of the "prawns" in order to "absorb their power." In a movie already teeming with racist overtones, perhaps this was not the wisest element to include in the movie.

And then there's the central character, Wikus, the man in charge of moving all the aliens to a new location outside of the city. At the beginning of the movie he is blind to his own evil as he moves through the slum, tossing aliens out of their shacks, smiling like a Nazi clearing the Warsaw ghetto. By the end of the movie his is really no better, because his main motivation for helping one of the aliens is pure self-interest: Wikus begins turning into a prawn after being exposed to alien fluid, and he needs the alien to help him revert to human form. Only briefly do we see the oppressor taking the place of the oppressed (and this was a very effective scene), but instead of gaining any real empathy for the aliens, it merely strengthens his desire to rid himself of the mutation. Another squandered opportunity.

Last but not least we have our central alien character, who is differentiated from the rest of the group by the fact the he has a child, wears clothing, and answers to the name "Christopher Johnson." Early on in the movie we are told that the reason we can't learn anything useful from the aliens is that they are more or less the "worker ants," and they have no initiative or intelligence in the absence of their leadership--except for Christopher, that is. Nothing about this character makes any real sense, from the fact that he responds to his slave name, wears oppressors clothing, and helps the villain survive, to the fact that his uniqueness is left unexplained.

There is so much more to talk about, but frankly I am running out of steam on this review. Most of my remaining complaints are cinematic in nature, and many of those deal with the fact that the director trotted out a number of dog-eared movie cliches, which drives me friggen' bonkers. In the right hands, this movie could have been stunning sci-fi and gripping social commentary, a movie for the ages. Instead, it's bland alien action and mixed metaphors, instantly forgettable. A shame.