District 9 – (2009) ****
Three movies in one weekend. A rare indulgence in my busy schedule. And not a clunker in the bunch.
Without a doubt, District 9 is the smartest action picture of the year. It’s a fast-paced,thriller that successfully melds classic sci-fi, a dollop of timely social commentary, bullet-pounding shoot ‘em ups, and grafts all this onto the suspense plot-line from “The Fugitive”. Its effects and cinematography are very effective, and the best use yet of the current trend towards Documentary-style story-telling. If this was, in fact, a low-budget film, then every dollar was well-spent. The documentary device is used here much more successfully than in last year’s Cloverfield. (Does Ricky Gervais get a royalty every time someone rips off “The Office” in using this device?)
All that said – I’m going to go out on a tangent here however and say I was a teensy bit surprised that this film turned out to be such an action-oriented picture. The marketing had set my expectations for a return to the glory days when science fiction was the genre of ideas and social messages.
When did the science start leaving science-fiction? When did social commentary become the second-class citizen in movie-making? When exactly did the future become just become another setting for action pictures? (Joining war movies , police movies, spy movies, and car-chase movies?)
Was it Star Wars? Alien? Terminator? Once they made big bucks (unlike most sci-fi), did Hollywood just put a red-light on making sci-fi that paused for thought and reflection?
Don’t get me wrong — I love all three of the above, and I love a great action film, and make no mistake about it: District 9 is a great action film. It start out gloriously with a fresh and wonderful sense of social satire and a terrific mirror to society with a new way to look at the challenges of immigration and the problems of cultures co-existing. But before long it moves away from ‘idea’ science-fiction (the likes of classic films like 2001, The day the Earth Stood Still, Soylent Green, Forbidden Planet), and pours on the bullets and explosions. Its more interesting themes move to the background and are replaced by traditional Hollywood one-dimensional themes like ‘corporations are evil’ and ‘the military is heartless.”
Have we become so restless as an audience that we can’t take ideas without the medicine of lots of stuff blowing up loudly? I would have considered this one of the best movies of the year had it stuck with its gutsy premise and explored that as deeply as possible – instead of spending so much of its latter-third so blatantly laying the groundwork for the inevitable sequel – District 10.
Rant finished. This is a terrific film. Go see it!
J’ accuse mon frere Deck !
You must have trespassed into my cerebral cortex when I was otherwise occupied and made off with my floridly feverish thoughts.
Your ‘rant’ sounds like a disquisition that has been roiling close to the inner surface of my skull for decades.
Fortunately, we still have science fiction NOVELS as an unsullied genre.
Hollywood has always had the demonic ability to transmogrify fiction and nowhere is is more obvious than in the realm that Deck has referenced; but this is, after all, just a niche of the capitalist dumbing-down brigade that measures itself in terms of revenue without investing part of itself pro bono.