RogerBW's Blog

District 9 07 January 2023

2009 horror, dir. Neil Blomkamp, Sharlto Copley, David James; IMDb / allmovie. The people who don't look like us have to be moved on.

You can be subtle about your message, or you can be heavy-handed. And this is a very South African film about the South African flavour of racism, though it goes some way towards universalising it. The alien ship arrived, and was full of directionless aliens and ultra-tech weapons which the humans couldn't use and the aliens wouldn't; so the aliens live in a shantytown in Johannesburg, and now it's time to move them further out of sight.

When this film came out many of my friends praised it very highly; but while I don't mind a low-budget look, I do like a bit of nuance in my storytelling. Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley in his first acting role) is a minor functionary who just wants to get on with the job, blind (wilfully or otherwise) to the suffering he causes, and ends up on the aliens's side… more or less? But other than one action right at the climax, everything he does can be explained just as well by his own self-interest: yeah, when his former friends are hunting him to carve him up into a treatment to let their troops operate alien tech, he's less in favour of them and by default more in favour of the aliens. That doesn't take a great moral shift to achieve.

Combine that with a second half that looks like footage from a computer game, complete with shaky-cam and gun-cam and the obligatory vehicle sequence, and I found myself rather disappointed. As a low-budget actioner it's not bad, but it holds out a promise of much more, and then does very little with it. There are some good moments – for example when mutated Wikus has been testing various alien weaponry on a firing range, and his employers put an actual live alien on the range for him to shoot and he suddenly can't avoid realising what sort of organisation he's helping – but even that is undermined by a standard Peter Jackson messy wet explosion. (Jackson organised financing and other resources for this film after the Halo film he'd planned to produce with Blomkamp directing got stuck in legalities.)

It's all right. But it's very forgettable.

As usual if you want more of my witterings you should listen to Ribbon of Memes.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]


  1. Posted by Owen Smith at 08:48pm on 07 January 2023

    I agree, this promised much and delivered little. It could so easily have been so much better.

  2. Posted by Ashley R Pollard at 11:01am on 08 January 2023

    I disagree, it's a film we bought on disc, though we still buy a lot of films on disc... because.

    And, on this occasion, we re-watched last year, and I Have to say it gets better each time I've watched it.

    The documentary style (low budget as you described) sits very well with theme of the story. A glossier film would make it more gun porn/alien action that would take away from the story.

    Wilkus is portrayed as bit of a simpleton, and added to his Father-in-law's involvement in the weapons division I think explains the Wilkus's journey to redemption.

    As for the complaint about Wilkus's moral shift, I would point out that the great majority of people are concrete thinkers, and those who are abstract formal thinkers only manage this for about a third of their time.

    That's not a defense of the moral quandary, only an explanation that people didn't evolve to maximize moral fitness.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1