December 18, 2009: District 9
District 9 is an odd duck. Tonally unique but still bearing the mark of an action blockbuster, it arrived amid a barrage of cryptic print advertising and did pretty good business at the box office. This rough, pseudo-documentary-style film about the ghettoization of a group of aliens stranded on earth manages to touch upon some very real social and racial issues, and tie them into some standard action-movie clichés.
The pacing of the film is frenzied, shot entirely in hand-held documentary fashion and with cutaways to news channel reports. I wasn’t sure whether that was just the setup and it would eventually settle down, but it never did. We follow the story as a high-ranking government bureaucrat takes on leadership of an effort to evict millions of aliens from a custom-built slum to a different custom-built slum when the government wants to reclaim some land. The aliens have been given nominal legal rights, in this case allowing them the luxury of personal eviction notices, but really they have no power and no say in what’s happening. This of course exactly mimics the social stratification of many nations suffering racial strife. When a personal connection gives this government employee reason to sympathize with the aliens, of course he loses all protection and is chased down by both sides until it is clear where he fits in.
District 9 is refreshingly gory and profane, like a throwback to the 1980s war and alien and conflict movies, before teenagers became the core audience for such films and they were cleaned up for mass popularity. Despite this amped-up action and the fascinating premise, though, the film proves surprisingly slight entertainment, and I don’t expect I’ll remember much of it by the time the Oscar nominations are announced and it may be acknowledged for its Editing.
Gory handheld actioner as social commentary.
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