Military Movies - Military Times

Sci-fi with a social conscience

‘The X-Files” on heavy steroids with a deep social conscience: For dedicated fans of alien/sci-fi flicks, that’s the irresistible lure of the tautly gripping “District 9.”

Director Neill Blomkamp, who co-wrote the script with Terri Tatchell, makes a remarkably assured feature-film debut with a near-seamless mix of visceral action, frenetic pacing and cutting-edge computer effects. The combination is like a cattle prod applied to a near-moribund genre.

In both style and concept, Blomkamp puts a fresh spin on some familiar conventions. The first 45 minutes are shot in hand-held news/documentary style, complete with CNN-type crawls, instantly establishing a sense of in-your-face immediacy.

And the aliens are not a warlike horde out to conquer Earth and eradicate humanity but simply exhausted, destitute refugees who want nothing more than to find a way to leave our little rock and go home.

The South African-born Blomkamp’s savviest gambit, however, was to set the film in his native land. The parallel between his story and apartheid’s dark legacy is so unmistakable that Blomkamp never has to mention it overtly.

But in truth, the framework of the story could apply just as well to any society throughout history in which an oppressed minority has suffered at the hands of a cruel, prejudiced majority.

The film opens 20 years after the arrival of the aliens, whose gigantic ship simply ran out of gas and floated to a stop above Johannesburg, where it has remained ever since.

The original million aliens — an insectoid/crustacean hybrid that the humans derisively call “prawns” — were taken from the cramped ship and housed in deplorable conditions in District 9, a motley amalgamation of dirty tin-shack camps ringed by barbed wire.

Xenophobic resentment of the aliens among the local human populace has reached a flash point, so the powers-that-be decide to relocate the aliens, now numbering 2.5 million, to new, far more isolated camps 200 miles outside the city.

The job of evicting them is given to private contractor Multi-National United, whose point man is mild-mannered Wikus Van De Merwe (the terrific Sharlto Copley), son-in-law of square-jawed MNU chief Piet Smit (Louis Minnaar).

In carrying out his duties, Wikus stumbles across an illegal lab of unknown purpose in the shack of alien Christopher Johnson.

Wikus accidentally sprays himself with alien goo and within hours starts to undergo some dramatic changes. How dramatic? He grows an alien claw on one arm, for starters — and that’s not even his biggest problem.

The aliens’ awesome weaponry, which was confiscated when they arrived, is keyed to their DNA; the weapons won’t fire unless the claw of a living prawn is pulling the trigger.

MNU has been performing secret experiments for years on the aliens, seeking a way around that little obstacle so they can reap obscene arms-sale profits.

Now, in Wikus, the company may have found its ideal lab rat — and his only hope of survival may rest with the very aliens he sought to subjugate.

With a story playing out over a span of only three days, Blomkamp keeps it going fast and furious in the final half-hour, which is capped by a mind-blowing battle scene and a heartbreaking coda that speaks volumes about what it means to be human.

The golden rule of the movie business is to play it safe, which means true surprises are comparatively rare.

“District 9” is one of those rarities. Blomkamp’s gritty, powerful tale blew me away.

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Rated R for violence, language and adult themes. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@militarytimes.com