The aliens arrived 20 years ago, parking their broken-down transport ship over Johannesburg, South Africa. Eventually humans made contact and, upon entering the ship, discovered hordes of malnourished insectoid aliens - who were quickly dubbed 'prawns'.A refugee camp was established, which, over the years, grew to become the ghetto known as District 9 - as the alien population grew in size and clearly had no way of getting home (wherever that may be).
Interest in alien weaponry attracted massive corporate interest as well as that of local crime lords but (un)fortunately the high-tech weapons were keyed to alien DNA and so wouldn't work for humans.
After two decades of bubbling racial tension between the humans and their unwelcome alien neighbours, Multi-National United, the corporation controlling the camp, has decided to relocate it further away from Johannesburg and sent in some pencil-pushers, backed up by trigger-happy mercenaries, to serve eviction papers on the 'prawns'.
In charge of the operation on the ground is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a rather bumbling jobsworth who accidentally becomes infected by some strange fluid he stumbles over in an alien's shack.
This sets off the whole train events that becomes the meat of District 9 as Wikus rapidly begins to change into something "not quite human", and his former employers and the area crime boss want to get their hands on him as his mutated DNA now allows him access to the alien weaponry.
Starting off as a rather hit-and-miss faux fly-on-the-wall documentary, Neil Blomkamp's movie suffers initially from being unable to stick truthfully to this format - inexplicably interjecting scenes that the human characters ("the film makers" and archivists of 'found footage', CCTV camera shots etc) couldn't possibly have witnessed.
However, after about 50 minutes this artifice is abandoned in favour of a straight-forward, high-octane action movie as Wikus and his new-found alien friend, 'Christopher', launch an attack on Wikus' old workplace to retrieve the only existing sample of the "strange fluid".
The story then becomes the classic mismatched, 'odd couple', buddy movie as human and alien fight a running battle back through the settlement camp - with Wikus morphing from the sniveling underdog into a battle-hardened, alien-loving Rambo figure.
The virtual stunts and special effects are quite stunning in District 9, quite often being so breathtaking that it takes a moment to register what you've actually witnessed and for the full awesomeness to sink in.
While the plot may not be that blindingly original or that deep, there is an air of verisimilitude that eventually settles over the movie that makes you forget that the aliens are computer-generated and convinced that a ghetto slum like District 9 really could exist if alien refugees actually turned up on our doorstep.
While most storylines reach a satisfactory conclusion within the film's one hour 50 minute duration, its ending is left nicely open for a possible sequel that could see District 9 develop as an Alien-style franchise.
