Now, this is science fiction!

This is a movie that has been needing to be made for a while now. I mean, this is a raw science fiction movie that makes no excuses and doesn't try to be something that it is not. It does not need nor try to explain everything. Often times you are left with nothing but your own opinions and thoughts as to what just happened. Shoot, the aliens speak their language, the humans speak English (mostly it seems) and yet somehow they both understand each other.

I like it that way.

The movie does have some heavy political/social undertones to it but I failed to make a connection immediately. I've been informed it's supposed to be a statement about South Africa during Apartheid. With some recent reading I can now see what is meant by that but I feel a certain level of knowledge is required to make that connection. Which is too bad actually.

The story goes that over twenty years ago an alien spacecraft landed above Johannesburg. Well, "landed" is not exactly right. Let's say "arrived" and then immediately began to hover above the city with no visible explanation of how it was doing such a thing. Eventually the humans break their way into the ship that had been unresponsive up to that moment. They discover a large number of aliens that were confused and malnourished. They were taken in and placed in a camp named District 9.

Since we have a social message to deliver the aliens are immediately abused and given a derogatory name. Although there isn't much explanation as to why everyone took an immediate dislike to the aliens since they seemed quite content to live in a dump. I guess the main problems being they had no concept of personal property and reproduced at an alarming rate.

Maybe it was the insatiable desire for cat food. After all, if the aliens eat all the cat food what would the humans feed their cats?

Anyway, the movie follows a man who works for a large multi-national weapons manufacturer/private army that has been tasked with controlling the alien district. We see him at first with a documentary type presentation from the camera following him around to security cameras throughout the city. Eventually it switches to a normal presentation but the fake documentary thing was a nice touch.

There is some nice alien technology throughout the movie and one thing I appreciate is that they do not bother to try to explain any of it. It's there, it works and it doesn't take much to figure out how to get it to work. Although weapons don't work for humans as they are tied to the DNA of the aliens, which is a bummer since humans are apparently only interested in weapons. Personally, I would have been more interested in what kind of video games they had or maybe how their power sources worked. Whichever was easier to figure out first.

Our hero, Wikus (remember South Africa), gets mixed up into things that he probably would prefer leaving alone. He gets caught between the humans wanting weapons and an alien who is doing his best to rescue his people to go home. So he goes on his adventure to fix things not knowing exactly who to trust and what's the right thing to do at any given moment.

Eventually we start getting our action scenes involving the alien technology. At this point the movie gets really brutal as it does not hold back on protraying the violence the weapons are capable of. Not much really in the way of gore but more like a guy is there one second and the next extremely small gooey pieces of him are flying through the air. There are a couple of cases of things that were outright gory. If you are squeamish prepare to look away.

How the movie ends is not all that surprising as it follows the usual rules. But it does leave things open for a sequel. District 10 I guess.

A note about the special effects in this film. In many ways they are flawless. There are parts where I could notice things weren't quite right but that's probably due to my experience. But for the most part everything looked REAL. The ever-present ship floating in the background always seemed... actually there. The aliens were believable and you could easily sympathize with their plight. There should be many people taking note in Hollywood of what can be done on the cheap. This movie made just under $40 million on opening weekend is already making profit. Of course, everyone in the movie is unknown to the U.S. market so there wasn't an actor making $15 million off the top right away.

Go see this movie so the director will get to make something else, he deserves it.

By the way, this movie is really similar to Alien Nation. If you liked District 9 then give it a try as you will most likely appreciate it.