Sunday, January 06, 2013

A War in District 9


To be honest, this movie was not quite what I had expected it to be when I first heard of it. I know that I'm rather late to the party when it comes to this movie. It's been on my to watch list for the longest time, and eventually it just slipped out of my mind. I had the pleasure of watching District 9 on BBC today, and it was a wonderful feature. After seeing many decent or passable movies, it was good to see something that made me uncomfortable, that was unsettling, and just amazing down to its core.

The movie is shot in a documentary style, and I thought it would stay in that format for the course of the film. It did, but not necessarily in the way that I had expected. The movie follows Wikus Van De Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley) into an alien populated slum in South Africa. He and a group from the formidable MNU are going about evicting these aliens from their dilapidated homes. The premise of why isn't made too clear until the ending half of the movie.

The movie's tension builds at a steady rate, sneaking in things for the audience to notice later on. There are no cheap shots; no one miraculously gets saved. The rise and falls come through sweat and blood, wrenching at the audience's tolerance and nerves along the way. Even though I'm watching the movie late, it's a great movie, and it lives up to the positive things I've heard about it. The positive thing is the movie isn't necessarily over hyped, and a fair amount of time has passed since its released. So if you want to check out District 9 for the first time or get a better retake, I would highly suggest this awesome (in the literal sense of the word!) movie.

1 comment:

  1. I was a little late to the D9 party too. I only watched it late in 2011, after I saw Sharlto Copley in A-Team. I thought he did an amazing job there. I looked up what else he was in, and was surprised to find out that he hadn’t been in anything else but D9. He’s one of the reasons I enjoy D9 even to this day. His portrayal of Wikus is very human instead of a clean-cut do-good hero. And to think that he improvised 90% of his lines is amazing! He’s another great South African import that Hollywood should definitely keep their eye on. He’s got a few movies coming out this year. I can’t wait to see him flourish!

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