District 9 starts off very strong, filmed mockumentary style, giving us news clips and talking heads as a means of providing back story: The alien spacecraft appeared over Johannesburg around 30 years ago. After no attempt by the aliens to contact the humans, they took it upon themselves to make first contact. After breaching the hukk of the ship they find the aliens starving to death. A decision is made to relocate them to an are just outside of Johannesburg. Now the save haven for these marooned aliens has turned into an internment camp. Locals want the aliens moved out of fear. Finally the govenrment decides to relocate them to further outside of town and now must serve eviction notices to all the aliens inhabitants. Enter Wikus van der Merwe, our clueless protaganist put in charge of serving these aliens. Whilst performing this task, Wilkus stumbles upon what appears to be the only alien who has properly addapted to the present situation, citing laws that should protect him when Wilkus tries to evict him. Wilkus accidently comes in contact with some alien chemical that eventually starts to turn him into an alien. He then becomes the target of both the military and the Nigerian pirates who seek to find the secret to alien weaponry which is inoperable by humans.
Now, this movie has many good aspects to it. The special effects are done tastefully and not over the top(save maybe the last big action sequence). Wilkus is a well rounded character. You love him at times and hate him at times(I may have spent more time hating). It practically beats you over the head with its paralleling of the treatment of these aliens to apartheid in South Africa not to mention treatment of refugees and illegal aliens. This is achieved by of course the title referencing District 6 in Cape Town and the talking head descriptions and feelings towards the aliens complete with an alien racial slur, "prawn" based on the aliens resemblance to shrimp.
Then there are the "Nigerians". The reason for the quotes is that is how these Nigerian hustlers are reffered to in the movie, as simply "the Nigerians". Now that would not be problematic if it wasn't for the specifics of this group who have set up shop in the alien camp, cheating the aliens out of weaponry and alien technology for cans of cat food which the aliens have become obsessed with. These "Nigerians" not only are ruthless gangsters who hustle these aliens, sometimes killing them for the fun of it or giving them use of Nigerian prostitutes, they are heavy into witchcraft, causing their crime boss to sometimes eat aliens. And of course when he gets wind of Wilkus' transformation of course he has found he next conquest. With all of these horrific qualities these characters are reffered to as simply "the Nigerians". The characters come across as stereotypes. These characters have no redeeming qualities and seem to only be put in the movie as eventual collateral damage. The audience is supposed to feel relief as our hero uses alien weaponry to literally explode the head of the Nigerian crime boss. It's no wonder the film has been banned in Nigeria. Nigeria's Information Minister Dora Akunyili is quoted as saying "We feel very bad about this because the film clearly denigrated Nigeria's image by portraying us as if we are cannibals, we are criminals." With all of it's apparent messages about the treatment of those who are considered "others" District 9 seems only to swallow its own tail.