Neill Blomkamp
District 9

My hope of seeing "Halo" on cinema screens has led me to review the latest project of its probable director, namely the very young South African Neill Blomkamp. Indeed, the film in question "District 9", which originated from the short film Alive in Joburg, promises to revolutionize the sociological approach to films of the genre, but also ensures a future contribution to the use and dictates on special effects.

The D9 project, yet another American cash-movie about aliens, costing a whopping 30 million dollars!, produced by Peter Jackson, directed and written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, tackles political and social issues such as xenophobia and racial segregation. Of particular impact are the interviews shot in a documentary style that align well with the film's cinematography; problems stemming from contact with other alien life forms, which this time are not seen as omniscient beings, but as real pains in the neck! In other words, those paranoias that we Italians know very well from mingling with people from different cultures...which I never quite understood, different cultures from what!?

The film's events are set in 1982 in South Africa near Johannesburg, where the beautiful Charlize Theron was born. They unfold in a plausible scenario as they witness historical events during apartheid in a residential area of Cape Town called District 6, but who would have thought? Now imagine those poor Africans who first had to endure the Dutch, with their damn expeditions, even changing their spoken language to Afrikaans with their lovely Dutch East India Company, with Raz Degan commanding a ship exporting shower gel from South Africa to Italy, if we want to add the deportation to America, even though I'm not sure about it, but who cares, it always rains on the wet, then the British and apartheid, to end up today with Esso, AGIP, and without Pandev how do we buy it?? Then Shell and various stuff extracting oil and polluting like it was Chernobyl after the accident; seeing a damn spaceship in distress crashing onto them to unload 2,000,000 aliens whose sole excuse, after understanding where they were and who they were dealing with, was to fix the spaceship and make a run for it, not to end up like contestants on Big Brother or lounging in front of some betting shop.

Thus our alien foes, visibly disliked by the local population, are ghettoed in a refugee camp called District 9, where they will remain "apartheid-ed" for the next twenty years...lucky them!
The fortune of our "enemies", and at the beginning due to possible Freudian mind-boggling, you too, like the local population, will "visibly dislike" them, is to be controlled by a fashion agency, no joke actually...by a Government Agency, the MNU Multi-National United, a bunch of Flash Gordon wannabes who make the SS look like the Village People, led by a more fanatical than ever Rosco Dunn, ordered to get hands-on the bio-tech knowledge and particularly military technology of the "unwanted visitors" or pains in the ass, you be the judge.

So, after various demonstrations with slogans NO-ALIENS and ALIENS OUT OF OUR HOUSE by the inhabitants of Johannesburg; those, intolerant also towards the ghettoization regime, are relocated and moved to a free zone 240 km from the metropolis at the South African government's behest...ah, finally after twenty years! And then we complain about the bureaucratic times of our country!

And this is where our hero Wikus/Sfigus Van De Merwe known as the GAY and appointed team leader to evict the non-humans, as a tough and experienced man, actually no! I got confused!...instead, this is none other than the recommended and shielded son-in-law of the head of the MNU.
Wikus is the classic Jehovah's Witness altar boy, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, has an LCD, a dog, a compact car, Sky subscription, never farts in his wife's presence whom he is madly in love with while she works the sidewalks of Johannesburg's suburbs, and even called to be listed as a contestant on the African Package Show hosted by Pupo!?...Pupo!!!!!???....yes Pupo! Who sings "Gelato al cioccolato dolce un po' salato TU!...." featuring the friend Mandino, a man of experience.

So, Wikus/Sfigus Van De Merwe, mmmmhhh…reminds me of a flop soccer player we bought some time ago……begins his campaign of "eviction from accommodation D9" initially with great diplomacy and savoir-faire only to get carried away and make a few heads pop, just for fun!

And it is during a search in one of the District 9 shacks that he finds an alien-made cylinder with a strange black substance inside which, like a "Phenomenon," he will let splash on his face, causing him some problem, namely a nice genetic mutation of the DNA, expected to complete an alien transformation within 14 weeks…bravo the idiot!
Admitted to the hospital and then urgently brought to MNU headquarters, he will undergo invasive exams, only to be mocked by the medical staff, who will attempt to saw off that arm, showing evident signs of mutation, compatible moreover with the use of alien bio-tech weapons…TA DAAAA’!!!!.

The same arm will be shown by Wikus with a flip-off gesture to the medical staff, at which point Wikus becomes "Fikus tough and experienced man"!
And thus the adventure of our hero begins, who like a real opportunist, takes refuge in District 9, yes! you expected flesh and blood Sylvester Stallone kicking everyone's ass, but we have to endure this loser who during the movie even steals a cell phone to moan and bother his wife while she's on duty, asking her to believe him when he says he hasn't had sexual relations with aliens as discredited by the Media...this time I'm not joking this part of the movie is true!

Inside D9, Fikus will meet the alien Christopher Johnson & son, whom he will help to leave in exchange for curing his transformation to human, restoring his image to the Media's eye, and thus returning to the old hypocrite, populist, plebeian, and shielded altar boy everyone knows…?!

An extremely engaging film, new, sincere, and at times truly moving, thanks to a very empathetic soundtrack; in which our Fikus will create chaos all over, first in an attempt to convince Christopher not to delay his cure by 3 years, he's about to ruin everything spaceship, movie, happy ending, and even the viewers' coronary arteries…damn!!!, then transforms into a Commando boarding an Alien2/ED209-style robot from Robocop, and begins to kick Rosco and his brothers’ asses, almost better than Rambo 2.
 
For some, this film might not hold anything so exceptional, but it’s been since "Alien Nation" and "War of the Worlds" that I had not enjoyed myself so much at the cinema.
In my opinion, it was a film of great impact, its exceptional nature lies, as already mentioned in the introductory review, not only in the social themes revisited in a new, innovative yet necessary key but also in the dynamics of the movie, more evident in the second, more action-movie part.
A film that overall leaves more than satisfied.