District 9

When was the last time you left a movie theater actually thinking?

For me, it was probably the last good sci-fi film of the summer, "Moon," but even that film didn't give me as much to chew on as "District 9." Albeit, the social commentary was thinly veiled, but the film had important things to say about how humans treat others we don't fully understand.

An alien race is forced to live on earth for over two decades in slum conditions when their ship breaks down over Johannesburg. Their containment and segregations echoes countless unfortunate ordeals in human history.

Complete unknown Sharlto Copley stars as Wikus Van De Merwe, an agent for the corrupt Multi-National United who takes the reigns in relocating the aliens from District 9 to District 10. The new location is a couple hundred kilometers out of the city, far enough away to eliminate uncivil interactions between races.

Things don't go according to plan though, and that's as much as you need to know. The places "District 9" goes aren't entirely unforeseen, but the way it gets there is handled so much better than most Hollywood pictures.

Copley is a revelation. This is his first role in a full-length film ever, and he carries it extremely well. His character arc is fabulous. He's a selfish weasel until the chips are down and he very naturally must grow. He's always the same guy, and never switches into "action hero" mode as lesser films would have done. This is some of the best character development I've seen on screen in a while.

The seamless blending of mockumentary and thriller works wonderfully. Even more impressive is that the film comes from a first time director, Neill Blomkamp. Some scenes would have been impossible to shoot with a documentary crew in tow, but that's kind of missing the point. The director manipulates the genre to fit the story, using the documentary style to get exposition out of the way quickly, then utilizing a more traditional style for the action scenes.

At first glance, the film seemingly has a couple plot holes, but on careful inspection, I think the movie just isn't long enough. The film has a quick pace, but there's so much going on it needs more time to flesh out its ideas. Though one could argue that the vagueness works by not beating viewers over the head.

I can't say if this film will go down as an all-time sci-fi classic as other critics predicted, but nonetheless, this is a very good, highly original flick that will make you leave the theater thinking. That's more than we can say for most flicks nowadays, isn't it?