Yesterday I saw this one,
District 9 is the first feature movie of South African director Neill Blomkamp. Is basically the apartheid with the aliens, is even set in South Africa!
Is astonishing to see what a rookie director managed to do. I think being the protégé of Peter Jackson must be really helpful. At first he was supposed to do the Halo movie but luckily that one was stuck in development hell and so we got this masterpiece which is actually a revised and expanded edition of a short movie that Blomkamp directed 4 years ago, "Alive in Joburg".
This is a high concept movie that doesn’t shy from taking risks. The aliens are not pretty. There is a reason they are called "Prawns". They are scavengers, obnoxious and terrible. Our hero is not a good person. In the beginning of the movie he roasts alive some alien eggs while cracking jokes. He is a bureaucrat, he tends to flee when in danger and he is not very good at fighting.
The transformation is definitely unsettling.
The actor playing the protagonist, Sharlto Copley is a nobody. Actually he got the part because he was the protagonist of "Alive in Joburg". Well, he did a wonderful job. He put to shame a lot of incredibly paid Hollywood actors.
The special effect are top notch but when the director is an ex special effect guru this is not surprising. The aliens are really aliens and not the same men in suit with a little prosthetics. The mother ship is wonderful and the alien weaponry is really cool.
A lot of the movie is shoot as a fake documentary giving to the entire tale a very realistic undertone, here we have a director willing the search a difficult shot, an innovative way to show what is happening, willing to experiment.
Maybe the only part that left me unsatisfied is that in the end we still don't know why the aliens are here but considering that they are already talking about a sequel we can wait.
This is a masterpiece that every scifi fan should see.
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