District 9
Illegal Aliens: A couple of decades too late to the party.
By Scott Renshaw @scottrenshaw
Co-writer/director Neill Blomkamp sets District 9’s pivotal event—the arrival of a derelict alien spacecraft over Johannesburg, leaving a million extraterrestrial refugees—in the 1980s. Apparently, that’s when the filmmaker learned everything he needed to know about allegorical science fiction.
Twenty years after the aliens’ arrival a heavily patrolled slum has sprung up around the hovering mothership, and the creatures—called “Prawns” for their arthropod-like appearance—have become the object of hostile native sentiment. Casually racist bureaucrat Wikus (Sharlto Copley) gets the task of overseeing a mass relocation of the Prawns farther away from the city, but a run-in with an alien liquid leaves him facing a particularly ironic transformation.
Yes, South African cinema is attempting the metaphor route to purge its apartheid guilt, while also providing a convenient counterpart for Americans as we confront our feelings about unwanted immigrants. Blomkamp serves up clunky analogues for real problems of segregation—e.g. the Prawns getting high on cat food—and hopes you’re either sympathetic enough to the themes not to care, or too wrapped up in the exploding bodies to notice.
But, what’s most disappointing about District 9 is how familiar it all is, provided you look back a generation. The alien-as-target-of-racism angle was covered by 1988’s Alien Nation; Wikus’ fate looks remarkably similar to that of Jeff Goldblum in 1986’s The Fly. Throw in nods to Aliens and RoboCop and clearly Blomkamp did his homework, re-watching the best of that era.
Which is different from re-creating it. Employing that popular device of the fake-documentary/found footage—though only when convenient, it seems—Blomkamp tries to work around the lack of a sympathetic protagonist. Mostly, though, he’s left with as much shooting as he can work into the final hour, providing a moderately entertaining slice of sci-fi action that doesn’t really work as idea-driven drama. In coupling genre pleasures with message-mongering, Blompkamp is just a couple of decades too late to the party.
DISTRICT 9
Sharlto Copley, Robert Hobbs
Rated R
Speaking of Sideshow
-
Letters to Juliet
True Love: Letters to Juliet is more than a sunny, romantic travelogue.
- May 12, 2010
-
Ajami
Crash Course: Ajami creates a vivid, authentic world that’s bleak but not oppressive.
- Apr 28, 2010
-
The Losers
The Also-Team: Every other minute of The Losers is stuff you’ve seen before.
- Apr 21, 2010
- More »
More by Scott Renshaw
-
Faces of Salt Lake County book and portrait reception
Images and personal stories in a new book reveal local demographic diversity
- Apr 17, 2024
-
Feature film review: THE BEAST
A filmmaker's compelling ideas get a bit tangled in references to his creative influences.
- Apr 17, 2024
-
Film Reviews: New Releases for April 12
Civil War, Escape from Germany, Coup de Chance, Hundreds of Beavers, La Chimera, Sting
- Apr 11, 2024
- More »
Latest in Film Reviews
Readers also liked…
-
Power Plays
Two satirical comedies explore manipulations and self-delusions by those with power.
- Aug 31, 2022
