In a word: Gritty

Plot: 20 years ago, an alien mother ship parked itself over the town of Johannesburg, South Africa. The bug-like aliens, commonly referred to by the derogatory term Prawns, are housed in a ghetto-like settlement on the outskirts of the city, known as District 9 and given ‘human’ names. District 9 is under the control of MNU (Multi-National United), a private corporation who is interested in the alien’s weapons biotechnology – which can not be used by humans. Caving to public pressure, the aliens are to be evicted from their hovels and moved to District 10, a “tent-city”, located more than 200 miles from the humans. Headed the eviction operation is MNU operative Wikus Van Der Merwe, a milquetoast promoted because he’s married to the boss’ daughter. While serving the aliens with eviction notices, Wikus unwittingly becomes infected with by the alien biotech, and rapidly starts to mutate. When MNU realizes that Wikus can utilize alien weaponry, he quickly goes from employees to fugitive. He hides in the only place he can think of – District 9. There he befriends Christopher, a Prawn who needs the biotech to fuel the mother ship back to their home.

Thoughts: Not as breathtaking as advance word made it, but still an exceptional film. Told in a quasi-documentary style, but without a lot of the nausea inducing shaky cam. The CGI is spectacular, in particular the characters of Christopher and his son, who give two of the more well-rounded portrayals – even though they are completely digital and don’t speak a word of English. The human acting is quite good, as well. Sharito Copely as Wikus is wonderful. Wikus isn’t the smartest character and his situation goes from bad to frightfully worse very quickly. Copley has an everyman quality that lends itself well to the character. The plight of the Prawns is, unfortunately, easy to believe. Unlike most “alien” immigration films, these aliens look nothing like humans. Since most of the aliens are worker class and not very intelligent – they are treated much as the bugs they resemble. It is also unfortunate that the actions of the MNU are easily believed. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but I always tend to believe in man’s inhumanity. The story does get a bit heavy-handed at times, especially near the end, but this is still a thought-provoking and well executed film. Good, intelligent science fiction is hard to find in film, these days, this is probably as close as we’re going to get.

Spoilers: I wonder if we will get a prequel (how and why the Prawns got here) or a sequel (3 years later, when Christopher comes back). Either way, I would like to see a continuance of the story.

If you liked this try: Alien; Alien Nation; Starship Troopers