Went and saw it this weekend, short mini review:

So I have given myself a day to workout how I feel about this movie, after replaying the movie over in my head a couple of times and explaining the entire thing to my wife, I am pretty much back to my emotions walking out of the movie theatre, which I couldn't really describe until yesterday after giving my wife a play by play of the movie. The best way to describe District 9 was to say that at the end of the movie I had the exact same emotional state as I did after watching American History X for the first time. After watching it, I realize that I just saw an amazing movie from start to finish, however at the end of the movie I just felt completely bummed. The entire reason for this is that, just like American History X, at the end of the movie there really is no one to root for. The movie is emotionally confusing, especially with the main character. I understand the emotional ebb and flow of the script because he is human and because he deals with things just like everyone else would (and the movie shows this in a great manner), its just that I still have a hard time watching that in a movie (escapism). I may have just been so conditioned by popular American cinema watching, that I need a hero, I might need for every writer to read Hero with a Thousand Faces and follow that 'ordinary guy to hero in 2 hrs' formula. But to be fair, most of the movies in my life that I thought were riveting, didn't follow that formula. Art doesn't follow those rules, I understand this, that is what makes it art but District 9 just crams the 'the movie as a mirror' down your throat. There are the in-your-face Apartheid allusions within the movie (takes place in Johannesburg, catfood etc), but as I watched it I also thought of the Trail of Tears, Japanese Internment camps of the 40s, The Hijra, The Exodus, The South, African Slavery, Nazi Germany, and all sorts of forced movements throughout history, both American and not. I think this movie will stand out because of the fact that the movie was not at all about race, but was everything about race. It took every single race and showed how cruel humanity as a whole can be to some external group (a group which also probably has the ability to destroy us all - so do you really want them to win?), and it only succeeded because of some pretty amazing special fx, that are so absolutely awesome that you don't even notice them.

Great movie overall, I would probably give it a 9 out of 10.


The 60 Second District 9 Review (No Spoilers)