After being really excited for this during the summer, I finally saw this at the end of September...
More than any other movie I've seen this year, this was the victim of some serious over-hype. At it's core, District 9 is a decent little sci-fi action movie with some not-at-all subtle political allegory thrown in. The action scenes are nice, the aliens look pretty creepy, and the pseudo-documentary style cinematography keeps the story moving forward. However, despite the fact that there are extended sequences featuring mercenaries fighting alien mecha, I found myself getting bored. Despite the documentary feel, nothing is really explained adequately and the characters just aren't very interesting.
I think the weird mix of political allegory and sci-fi action adventure ultimately hurts the film. Pursuing either direction would have probably resulted in a better (or at least more coherent) film. As it stands now, District 9 feels a bit like someone wanted to write a movie about apartheid and then decided to play Halo instead. It's not bad, but I don't think it's as good as everyone's been saying.
1 comment:
You read my mind on this one! I really liked the premise and how the film started out, but the last half hour or so were way too many explosions for what started out as an interesting political allegory. The trailer was also misleading, with a good amount of footage that wasn't even in the film. But that isn't the fault of the filmmakers.
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