> District 9
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Robert Hobbs, Vanessa Haywood, Jed Brophy, Nathalie Boltt
Rating: (R16)
3 stars (out of 5)
Reviewed By Christine Powley
Films have been imagining first contact for a long time now. Usually it is a sombre occasion. The aliens have something very important to tell us and we earthlings are filled with awe.
District 9 (Rialto and Hoyts) takes a more realistic stance.
Aliens might not be from this galaxy but when they arrive they are no different from any other bunch of unwanted displaced persons.
Twenty years ago an alien spaceship arrived and took up a hovering pattern over Johannesburg. The South Africans feel a mixture of pride that the aliens chose them and distaste for the cat-food eating, scavenging aliens.
Aliens are quickly named prawns and corralled in District 9.
The film opens with an initiative to clear the crime-ridden District 9 and move the aliens to a new tent city 30km out of town.
Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is the clueless pen-pusher whose job it is to gather signatures from each alien, proving that they agree to be rehoused.
Things are go smoothly until Wikus confiscates some alien contraband.
He is unaware of its importance but soon he is on the run, with the despised prawns the only ones who can help him.
Publicity for District 9 has tried to turn this into something mysterious and novel, but I am sure I have seen this storyline in Dr Who, and frankly better acted too.
Best thing: Setting the action in South Africa adds levels of meaning.
Worst thing: The aliens that kick this all off are undeveloped. Are they as dumb as the humans contemptuously assume or are they as smart as their technology? Who knows, as it changes depending on the needs of each particular scene.
See it with: Your cellphone, so you can upload your opinion immediately it has finished.
