District 9 (2009)
Country: US/NZ/CAN/SA
Technical: col 112m
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Vanessa Haywood
Synopsis:
In a future Johannesburg a vast alien vessel hovers. Its occupants, insect-like bipeds known pejoratively as 'prawns', though initially the beneficiaries of a rescue operation, are soon housed in their thousands in a vast shanty town known as District 9. A relatively lowly employee of the authority responsible for policing the project receives the task of serving eviction notices on the inhabitants, so that they can be moved to an out-of-town 'District 10', or concentration camp.
Review:
There are echoes here of Enemy Mine, Independence Day, Starship Troopers and The Fly, as the hero slowly develops prawn-like characteristics after infection with an alien kind of rocket fuel. It also follows the documentary format of having talking heads included in what is presumably part of a reconstruction/exposé, though this is fluid and never enters [REC] territory of positing a cameraman in amongst the action. An attempt to do something intelligent but different with the clout afforded by the Lord of the Rings films, it is a refreshingly non-American version of the sorts of ideas Verhoeven has worked out previously: satire at the expense of dubious multinationals interested only in weaponry, a pun on the concept of race relations. It builds to an elegantly mounted three-way stand-off which avoids overt gung-hoism.
Country: US/NZ/CAN/SA
Technical: col 112m
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Vanessa Haywood
Synopsis:
In a future Johannesburg a vast alien vessel hovers. Its occupants, insect-like bipeds known pejoratively as 'prawns', though initially the beneficiaries of a rescue operation, are soon housed in their thousands in a vast shanty town known as District 9. A relatively lowly employee of the authority responsible for policing the project receives the task of serving eviction notices on the inhabitants, so that they can be moved to an out-of-town 'District 10', or concentration camp.
Review:
There are echoes here of Enemy Mine, Independence Day, Starship Troopers and The Fly, as the hero slowly develops prawn-like characteristics after infection with an alien kind of rocket fuel. It also follows the documentary format of having talking heads included in what is presumably part of a reconstruction/exposé, though this is fluid and never enters [REC] territory of positing a cameraman in amongst the action. An attempt to do something intelligent but different with the clout afforded by the Lord of the Rings films, it is a refreshingly non-American version of the sorts of ideas Verhoeven has worked out previously: satire at the expense of dubious multinationals interested only in weaponry, a pun on the concept of race relations. It builds to an elegantly mounted three-way stand-off which avoids overt gung-hoism.
Country: US/NZ/CAN/SA
Technical: col 112m
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Vanessa Haywood
Synopsis:
In a future Johannesburg a vast alien vessel hovers. Its occupants, insect-like bipeds known pejoratively as 'prawns', though initially the beneficiaries of a rescue operation, are soon housed in their thousands in a vast shanty town known as District 9. A relatively lowly employee of the authority responsible for policing the project receives the task of serving eviction notices on the inhabitants, so that they can be moved to an out-of-town 'District 10', or concentration camp.
Review:
There are echoes here of Enemy Mine, Independence Day, Starship Troopers and The Fly, as the hero slowly develops prawn-like characteristics after infection with an alien kind of rocket fuel. It also follows the documentary format of having talking heads included in what is presumably part of a reconstruction/exposé, though this is fluid and never enters [REC] territory of positing a cameraman in amongst the action. An attempt to do something intelligent but different with the clout afforded by the Lord of the Rings films, it is a refreshingly non-American version of the sorts of ideas Verhoeven has worked out previously: satire at the expense of dubious multinationals interested only in weaponry, a pun on the concept of race relations. It builds to an elegantly mounted three-way stand-off which avoids overt gung-hoism.