District 9

There’s a scene in Dis­trict 9 when the main char­ac­ter, after endur­ing a lot of pain and humil­i­a­tion, has to make the choice of either run­ning into bat­tle guns ablaze or retreat. He chooses the lat­ter know­ing full well that his actions are dri­ven by fear and selfishness.

Dis­trict 9 or “D9” is many things all rolled up into a hard to describe pack­age. Among them it’s a sci-fi adven­ture with all the ele­ments you’d expect like blaster guns and an enor­mous space­ship. It’s also an unre­lent­ing social com­men­tary and an action-packed romp that refuses to let down its guard.

The effects and cin­e­matog­ra­phy com­pli­ment each other quite well and at times it’s hard to dis­tin­guish between the two. That said, they are not of the slick vari­ety that other films con­vey, but the grimy tex­ture is beau­ti­ful and per­fect for the por­trayal of a enslaved race of aliens liv­ing in South African slums.

It’s an unfor­giv­ing, rav­ished and self­ish envi­ron­ment, leav­ing barely any room for sur­vival. It’s a film that is best expe­ri­enced with­out dig­ging for holes in the plot (of which they are a few) or mak­ing assump­tions deal­ing with the char­ac­ter por­trayal or progression.

I enjoyed it because it didn’t reveal too much of itself and yet what it did expose was raw (human and alien) emo­tion, flaws in the human fab­ric and a detached feel­ing of human­ity, or at least I felt detached at times.

★★★★★