Thursday, August 20, 2009

Review of District 9

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Review of District 9 (no spoilers)


The new movie, District 9 blew me away.

I saw District 9 in Indianapolis when I was at Gen Con a few days ago. I went with a couple of friends late one night. I’m glad I saw it, and thought it was completely awesome. I really felt like I had been kicked in the gut during parts of this movie. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s rated R for good reason. There are some really gory moments that made even me, the hard to shock nurse, cringe a little.

The story was brilliant. The film is shot like a documentary about what happened when we humans decided to move the aliens who had been stuck on Earth to a different holding camp. It follows one man, who was put in charge of the operation, interspersed with documentary style clips. I don’t want to say any more. I avoided watching the trailers and wanted to know as little as I could before seeing it.

Overall, the movie is a revelation and shows what can be accomplished when excellent film-making, amazing CGI, great acting, and tremendous writing come together. I can nit-pick the heck out of anything, but I can find almost nothing to pick at with this movie. Perhaps one line of dialog toward the end, but that’s it.

The two friends that I saw it with, writers Chris Pierson and Brad Beaulieu, discussed it afterwards. We were all just shocked at how good it was. The plot moved so fast, was so interesting, and kept our attention the whole time. The ending is not what you’d expect from Hollywood—though this was not really a Hollywood movie. Peter Jackson produced and a South African guy directed.

I give this movie five out of five stars. Go and see it on the big screen, but leave the squeamish friends, and the kids at home.

Paul Genesse
Author of The Dragon Hunters
www.paulgenesse.com

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