Reviews
It's another one with funny accents, only this time it's South African.
District 9 is written and directed by newcomer Neill Blomkamp, a native of Jo'burg [that's what they call it, the kids and that], and produced and paid for by Peter "Santa from Hot Fuzz" Jackson no less.
Based on a short film Blomkamp made a couple of years of ago [called Alive in Joburg... told you that's what they called it] District 9 takes place in an alternate reality where a space ship suddenly turned up in the mid-80s and ground to a halt in the sky above JHB. The aliens within, known locally by the derogatory term ‘Prawns’ due probably in large part to the fact that they look like massive prawns, are taken from their stricken vessel and lobbed into an internment camp just miles from central Duckberg.
No one calls it that, but I ran out of abbreviations.
Back to now and we meet Wikus Van De Merwe [pronounced, in case you were wondering, Vikus van da Merv-ah], an office goon for MNU [Multi-National United] the company in charge of corralling the prawn and keeping an eye on them. A potted history lets us know that the locals don't take too kindly to their extraterrestrial neighbours, and as such MNU are mobilising a resettlement operation. Wikus gets the nod to lead said embargo on account of nepotism [he's married to the boss’ daughter], although the job really just amounts to serving eviction notices and getting aliens to sign on the dotted line.
Wikus is a standard desk bound mook. Reasonable house, reasonable wife etc... and he's backed up by the sadistic men of the white clad MNU Military cowboys. On a routine serving, Wikus gets a face full of some weird alien liquid and things start to get wacky.
Shot partly in the regular movie way and partly in the style of an after the fact documentary, District 9 switches seamlessly between the two without even a hint of jarring.
Carrying the weight of pretty much the whole movie is a man called Sharlto Copley. A friend of the director from way back, Sharlto had a pretty minor role in the original short film and was around to stand in front of camera during some test shots. He won over Jackson and everyone else with his unassuming everyman nature, to the point where he was allowed to improvise all of his dialogue during the ‘documentary’ portions of the flick.
They were right to choose him because, and without wanting to give away too much of the plot here, Copley handles the transformation of Wikus from meek office scutter to whatever he turns into I'm not gonna tell you, so perfectly you barely notice it happening. There's no ‘rage moment’ where Wikus sees one injustice too many and does his "ENOUGH IS FOKKEN ENOUGH" speech before grabbing a gun in each hand and cooking as many fools as he can lay eyes on. He's understated, often scared and confused, just trying to do what he thinks will rectify his situation from one moment to the next.
He's real, is my point. There's not a hint of action movie grandstanding or insincere pathos, which I expect stems from the fact that Sharlto isn't an actor at all and this gives him a genuiness [not a word I don't think] that he might otherwise not have.
Shot on the new Red One camera [getting nerdy about technical specs now... sorry] in an actual Jo’burg slum town, District 9 cost $30 million to make and came about when Blomkamp and Jackson's planned Halo movie was mothballed in development Hades. Jackson still wanted to work with the young Afrikaaner so threw him the cash and told him to make whatever he wanted. The result is possibly the best movie of the summer and definitely the third best I've seen this year [behind Watchmen and Moon] and you should definitely go and see it.
I mean that. Go on.
District 9 - Brought to you by Gazz Wood -