Review of District 9

District 9 (2009)
3/10
Lets start with the Good
10 September 2009
I can, somewhat, understand the high rating of this movie. Its action packed, takes you along from the start and keeps you with it the entire movie. I definitely like the documentary/news style filming. The cuts to normal camera work are smoothly done, and the non-static camera work contributes greatly.

Being a relatively low budget movie I think the use of CGI is great. Its not superb, but definitely good enough. The acting is pretty good also, with a touch of surreality/absurdness in it (ie the parents and stuff).

While that's all great and stuff, imo the story itself is the most important. making an action movie gets you so far, its the story line that needs to make sense.

and in that this movie definitely fails. There are many...MANY.. smaller plot holes, which are sometimes forgivable, but not in these numbers. And there are large plot holes which aren't forgivable at all. To be fair, its like a story of a 7 y old totally awesome, but totally lacking consistency.

****spoiler warning*****

Lets just name a few obvious ones;

alien ship hangs there for 3 years (I forgot I thought 3). apparently the aliens cant get out and need to be saved by the humans. No explanation as to why, but a sentence is given 'leaders all died' oh oke! how many were there?

Aliens are like redneck hillbillies? there are a lot of them but all expect once seems to have any intelligence. Still they are pretty human like with human emotions and such.

They are a bit aggressive, but not really hostile, yet they have a lot of big guns. Which they trade for crap with gangsters. Oke so the aliens are not really taken care of and gangsters come in and sort of control the alien population. Very unreal situation!

one alien is smart though and even seems sophisticated. he spends 20 years looking for some stuff. He could find that while in the mothership? I seriously have to believe he had to spend 20 years roaming a dump for an uncertain amount of black mutagen/gasoline?

That stuff is pretty awesome, if inhaled by another species it will turn him into an alien, but if put in a ship its star travel material baby... ridiculous.

when Wikus mutates the hospital is immediately evacuated, yet in the research center they touch him without protection, and force him to do all kinds of stuff. I don't know why really.

apparently human hookers have sex with the aliens.. Jesus Christ.. really? you could let that part out? its totally uncalled for and doesn't fit the movie at all, but it gets worse they try to f***k wikus over by saying he had sex with them too. Such a lame part of the movie very childish.

back to the smart roach; so the world gets tired of them, but people and roaches can to some extend speak to each other (atleast some). So there was no possibility that the humans could help them out, you know by trying to help find the black stuff.. no that all needs to be very secret. Its slightly backed by the EVIL BIG CORPORATION which has a hit team with a very evil hunter leader (cliche at its best).

The part where wikus enters the robot is weird to me to. So he fits the suit oke, but this mega tech units has emotions and feelings?? did 'they' want to add somewhat more drama to the movie, like there wasn't enough? the whole movie was packed with drama but they topped it with the robot scene. every time he was hit wikus moaned and seemed to be hurt. the robots movements where human like and also seemed to express feelings... it even barfed (black stuff!¿). But wikus, suddenly turning into rambo, kept the robot up because of his powerful mind. its not that the machine broke down, no when wikus's spirit broke the robot broke... at least that is how it looked to me.

also when wikus heard that the fixing of would took 3 years he just decided to knock out the only one who could possibly help him at a very crucial moment.. why is that? seriously dumbest decision ever. But miraculously enough he is able to fly an alien plain anyways. almost as miraculous as the roach being able to survive intense crossfire defending with a small metal plate.

another failing moment imo is when the roach is in the lab (the suicide mission that goes extremely easy) he is flabbergasted when he sees a dead alien.. uhm I don't know, I see aliens being killed and harassed all the time, that really blowed your mind? btw how come wikus had passage to that room? he wasn't really in the position for that, he never seen it before.

well I got a little carried away with this comment, I'll stop here but I assure you I can come up with many more weak sport in the movie. The fact is, the story is so weak its like seems made up by a child. an excited one that makes up stuff along the way.

Well if you managed to read all this you probably know I am not liking this movie, yet it wasn't hard to sit it out. The constant action keeps you drawn. I wont recommend it, but if one wants to see it I wont try to withhold you either.

poor movie with great camera work and good acting, but with one of the weakest story lines I've seen so far.
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