Movie Review: District 9

Verdict: Deep, smart & non-mainstream sci-fi film that leaves room for imagination

This movie tells an alien-relocation (yes, the alien here are the refugee, who came to earth 20 years ago) programme, which went wrong in the middle of progress.

There's a lot of metaphor in this movie, which I thought they are closely-tight with the current social issue that we have.

And in fact, the director came from South Africa, which had (and still has) serious racism issue.

The movie started a bit slow to introduce the character, the background of the alien 'invasion' and the eviction programme.

I thought the director tried to depict the racism issue with the metaphors below:

Alien: the blacks in South Africa,
Human: the whites who applied apartheid (District 9 in this film) to the blacks
Wikus, the main character: the refugee that has identity crisis (starting from the middle of the film)

And lastly, the MNU: it looks like the government or underground organisation, who would do anything to cover up, and to get the maximum benefit to the organisation (in terms of money, of course)

Towards the end, the movie tends to be gory (but in an 'instant' way) but it tells that, when the minority isn't given the rights they deserved - you can't guarantee that there'll be no rebel or even terrorism.

This movie combines the best element of Cloverfield (mockumentary-filming style), Fly (evolution), Transformers (alien that has hi-tech weapon who lives on earth) and Star Trek (back to back action that looks fresh)

This movie is not without flaw - especially the escape part towards the end.

However, this movie is fresh - in terms of idea (the alien didn't invade USA this time, and etc) and the character (the evil here is human, not alien). The director did it well with the action + storytelling (with metaphor) and yes, I won't be surprised if we have the sequel "District 10" in few years time.

Therefore, two ratings will be given:
Rating#1: 10/10 (for this is the director's first film)
Rating#2: 9/10 (for general rating)