District 9 Movie Review: Cool, Unique but “Buggy”
I went to District 9 on Sunday afternoon with friends. I walked into the movie knowing zero about it other than it had something to do with aliens, and that it was produced by Peter Jackson. A couple of my friends seemed really excited to see it, so I tagged along.
I liked the movie. It was definitely “unique”, something I hadn’t quite seen before. It had a lot of action, and some pretty good acting. Wikus van de Merwe is played by Sharlto Copley, an actor/director/producer that I had never heard of before. Apparantly, (and I didn’t learn this until after seeing the movie), Copley improvised all of his dialogue in this film. That is very interesting to me because I felt torn about this acting performance. On one hand, it was very, very good. He gives this kind of nutty, funny performance, while still managing to kick some butt in action scenes, show fear in terrifying situations, and express deep love and sorrow when talking to his wife. Yet, when he gets angry or flustered, his vocabulary becomes limited to mostly F-bombs, which I admittedly do not care for.
The biggest critique I have about the film, is that I was unable to establish much emotional attachment to any of the characters in this movie. On one side you have the human race who fears or hates the aliens, and confines them to living in slum-like conditions. Maybe I should hate them and cheer on the aliens? But the aliens go around killing people, and look like giant, upright grasshoppers. So then should I cheer for Wikus? Well, he is part of the human establishment that persecutes the aliens and later becomes a target himself, so really from start to finish I’m just not sure who to side with. The result is a very cool, unique movie, where I found myself excited to see what happens next, but not really caring what that might happen to be. Who lives, who dies– who cares– oh that was a cool explosion!
In summary, I liked the movie for its action, special effects, uniqueness, and some good acting, but the film isn’t perfect either.