"DISTRICT 9" (2009) Review

"DISTRICT 9" (2009) Review

I had been looking forward to "DISTRICT 9" for nearly two months before it finally hit the American movie theaters in the late summer of 2009. When I had first heard that Peter Jackson had produced a film that was directed and co-written by Neil Blomkamp about aliens living on Earth, I wondered if I would finally see a movie about aliens being oppressed or victimized by humans. Then I remember that I have seen similar concepts in other movies like "ALIENATION", "E.T." and "DISTRICT 9".

However, "DISTRICT 9" was also supposed to be allegory about the apartheid system that Blomkamp had lived under, during his youth. In the film, aliens found themselves stranded on Earth - namely around Johannesburg, South Africa in the early 1980s. The South Africans forced the aliens to live in housing districts that practically resemble slums for over twenty-five years. When Wikus van de Merwe, a bureaucrat from a private company (Multinational United "MNU") that has been contracted to deal with the aliens, is exposed to their biotechnology, he begins to transform into an alien. Wikus eventually finds himself being hunted by MNU so that he can use the weaponry they had confiscated from the aliens on their behalf.

I must admit that Blomkamp had created a great concept. And I also thought it was clever of him to use documentary-style film making to describe the aliens' arrival on Earth. Also, he was fortunate to hire actor/writer Sharlto Copley for the leading role. I thought Copley gave an excellent and complex portrayal as the unfortunate bureaucrat, Wikus van der Merwe. I also enjoyed the film's special effects and some of Trent Opaloch's cinematography. But in the end, I believe that Blomkamp had tripped himself with some questionable plot lines and his portrayal of the Nigerian gangsters.

There are some aspects of the plot that bothered me. One, how did the South Africans managed to board the mother ship from helicopters? And two, how was the mother ship able to hover over Johannesburg for nearly three decades without any liquid fuel or command module (which had dropped from the ship years earlier) to move it or keep it up in the skies? I also found the action sequences featured in the movie's last half hour to be rather over-the-top at times. Blomkamp seemed to have read Michael Bay's handbook on filming action sequences. And then there were the Nigerians.

Blomkamp's allegory about apartheid was certainly given full support from his portrayal of the white and black South Africans' intolerance toward the stranded aliens. But he had undermined his message with an offensive portrayal of Nigerian gangsters who lived in Johannesburg. The gangsters are led by a wheelchair-bound Nigerian, who is told by his shaman (called "witch doctor" in the film) to consume the flesh of aliens in order to regain his health. In fact, an early scene in the film featured a white South African female in the movie's mockumentary who commented that the Nigerians harbored a "superstition" that the aliens' flesh would be able to cure many of humanity's ailiments. And the only females willing to have sex with another species - namely the aliens - are Nigerian women. It was quite clear in the film that no white or black South African females were willing to commit such an act. Considering the South Africans' (both white and black) negative views of Nigerians, I am not surprised. As I had stated earlier, the Nigerian gangster's shaman is referred to as a "witch doctor" - a term that many non-Christian or non-Muslim Africans would find offensive. In fact, I found the movie's portrayal of the Nigerians to be very offensive. Judging from the terms they used and their accents, I suspect they were portrayed by South African actors. And as a relative of mine had pointed out, the Nigerians portrayed in "DISTRICT 9" may have regressed the motion pictures' portrayal of blacks a good five hundred years.

I wish I could say that I liked "DISTRICT 9". As I had earlier pointed out, Blomkamp's decision to use the relationship between the stranded aliens and their South African hosts could have served as a perfect allegory to apartheid. But the the drawn-out action sequences in the movie's last half hour and its portrayal of the Nigerians turned me off. In the end, I found "DISTRICT 9" to be a disappointing film.