Yes God dammit I watched a copy on DVD! BUT it was a perfect quality screener which a mate gave me and I will still be seeing it on the big screen when it finally opens here in 3 years or something!
Anyway, on to the movie. It was class. It was amazing. It was even better than i expected. Was it perfect? Course not! And since this is a review I will be pointing out its few short comings as well as all the great stuff.
I will try my best to keep this spoiler free but some may slip out so read at your own risk! The plot is pretty straight forward. 28 years ago an alien mothership came to Earth and came to a stop directly over Johannesburg. The aliens on board were in a pretty bad way so us humans decided to set them up with homes. But when the humans began to get tired of the "prawns" fairly aggressive behavior it was decided that they should be moved to a special, segregated area called District 9, which basically becomes a slum. Patience over the alien situation runs out and control over them is contracted to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company that shows little regard for the aliens' welfare. MNU is interested in using the aliens' advanced weaponry, but its integration with alien biology makes it useless for humans.
Enter the movies protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley). He is assigned to move the aliens from District 9 to District 10..which, unbeknown to the aliens is little more than a concentration camp. Wikus is pretty much an asshole when we first meet him. But something happens to him while conducting a weapons raid in one alien's shack which shifts the viewers sympathies considerably! Through the course of these events Wikus meets an alien called Christopher and his young son, and through necessity they are forced to make an uneasy alliance. To say any more would ruin it so I'll leave it at that.
Sharlto Copley is fantastic in this. And what makes his performance stand out even more is the fact that he is not an actor(or was not). He was director Neil Blomkamp's buddy in film school! The other performances are fine too although Wikus and Christopher(cgi) are really the movies main focus. Which leads me to the effects. Flawless. And i mean FLAWLESS. You will think the aliens are actually acting in the movie. District 9 cost 30 million to make. A movie the likes of GI Joe cost over 3 times that and looks embarrassing in comparison.
This is a Sci Fi action movie with brains. Neil Blomkamp has kept quiet about the Apartheid allegory critics have claimed his film to be, but its fairly obvious MNU's eviction and relocation of the aliens is based on District Six, a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. The district was declared a 'whites only' area by the apartheid government in 1966 and the population of 60,000 forcibly removed to Cape Flats, 25 kilometres away during the following years.
The only negative things i can say about District 9 is that it doesn't really explain enough. Why the aliens left their home planet and decided to come to Earth in the first place is not vital to the story, but it would have been nice to know! Its also a mystery as to why Christopher seems so civilized and intelligent while all of the other aliens are violent and almost animalistic. The villains are also a little cartoonish at times, especially in the action packed climax, but it doesn't take you out of the movie.
This is one of my favorite movies of the year along with Watchmen and Moon. I would recommend it to anyone, even non sci fi fans as i think they will still find a lot to enjoy in the story.
5/5 stars