I went and saw District 9 last evening, I’ve always been a sucker for films that are set outside the realm of our everyday reality. So District 9, which deals with a stranded prawn like race of Aliens being segregated from society, was pretty appealing to me from the initial trailers.
The film flowed extremelly well and wasn’t completely predictable, which is my biggest problem with most mainstream action flicks. The special effects and CGI was all top notch and it was especially interesting to see how they blended real stock news footage from Africa into the film and blended it with their special effects.
The movie’s biggest downfall is that it could have done so much more but settles on being a simple action movie. The films story, it’s South African location, and most importantly the location’s history and struggles with apartheid, provided a wonderful backdrop to examine humanity’s problems in dealing with racism. The first half of the film really lays the groundwork and foundation for this, unfortunately it’s abadoned in the second act where it morphs into a mainstream action flick. It didn’t ruin the film, but I can’t help but feeling that they could have made a deeper and smarter move had they not made 180 degree turn in the middle of the flick.
That’s my two cents, by the way you can watch Alive in Joburg, the short film that District 9 was based on thanks the good people at Google.
Subscribe by RSS
