District 9

Went to see District 9 at the Embassy last night.

It’s produced by Peter Jackson and set in South Africa.

The film is basically about two million aliens turning up in a damaged spaceship, and being housed in temporary camps which turn into slums. There are obvious parallels to apartheid era South Africa.

However the film doesn’t put the politics on the pedestal, and mainly focuses on telling a good story focusing on the very likeable Wikus van de Merwe. He is a somewhat bumbling bureaucrat and at first in the film you think he is going to do something very stupid that ends in disaster. He only got the job due to his father-in-law.

However over the film he transforms into the most unlikely of heroes, And I mean he literally transforms.

I really liked the film, and it is a good one to see on the big screen. It also has some very cool weapons!

My criticism though would be the weakness of parts of the plot. Without giving too much away, there is no sound explanation for why the aliens didn’t tell the humans what was wrong with the ship and that once they get it fixed, they could go.