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Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is a typically awkward 14 year old girl. She wants to be a photographer, she loves her siblings Lindsey and Buckley, she’s never kissed a boy and she wants to shed any sense of the ordinary that might be lurking about inside of her. After receiving a camera for her birthday, she proceeds to shoot random pictures until using up every last roll of film her parents, Jack and Abigail, had given her. Her parents promise that they will develop one roll of film per month, which obviously leaves her quite disappointed. After school one day, she’s approached by Ray, the boy she has a massive crush on. Ray kind of looks a little old for Susie if you ask me, because Saorise Ronan barely even looks 14. She looks more like she’s 11. Anyways, to her complete shock and surprise Ray wants to meet Susie Saturday at the mall in the gazebo, but tragically, this will never happen.

I’m not giving away anything by telling you Susie is murdered by the Salmon’s neighbor, George Harvey, who is played brilliantly by Stanley Tucci. On her way home from school, she’s lured by Harvey into a sort of cornfield mini-dungeon that he has built right into the ground for the sole purpose of trapping and killing her. The scene with the two of them is extremely intense, and really gives you this overwhelming sense of unease, despite already knowing that she’s not going to make it out alive. When she finally decides that it’s best that she gets the hell out of there, she makes a dash for the hatch, kicks Harvey in the grill and at first she thinks she’s home free. Susie sprints home only to slowly realize, she’s not really on Earth anymore, but rather in the ‘in-between’.

That’s about all I can give you without getting really spoilery, something the trailer could’ve taken a hint from. The trailer just assumes we’ve all read the book by Alice Sebold and gives a bit too much of the premise away in my opinion. I guess that’s ok though really because the movie isn’t so much about the murder mystery but rather the effect it has on her family. The real meat to the story is in her inability and her family’s inability to just let go. It’s still got a dash of whodunit, but strictly from Susie’s family’s perspective since we all know who did what already.

My main issue that keeps this from being really great lie within just a couple of things. The first being the art direction and Jackson’s over indulgence as a film director. Yes I know that to a lot of you out there, Peter Jackson can do no wrong. But in Lovely Bones, he’s really just taking a somewhat flimsy adaptation of a book and using it as an excuse to show us one elaborate set piece after another. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to like here and at times it looks fantastic but most of the time it just comes across as very uninspired; very ‘been there, done that’ type of art direction. For a good number of scenes that are shot in the ‘in-between,’ I felt like I was watching a rehashed version of the Robin Williams flick, ‘What Dreams May Come.’ Overly stylish and stylish just to be, well, stylish. You Avatar haters must be screaming at your computer screen right now. How could I possibly fault Jackson for going overboard on style while using a thin plot and still unabashedly love Avatar? Well, as I pointed out earlier, the sets and design just seem recycled from other movies. I fully expect a director like Peter Jackson to push the envelope when it comes to this stuff and unfortunately, it comes across as a bit lazy in parts.

The other thing that I know is going to turn a lot of people off, is the ending and here I cannot avoid spoilers so read at your own risk:

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So why in the hell am I still recommending this? It’s still pretty slick to look at here and features a couple really great performances from Stanley Tucci, Saoirse Ronan, and Susan Sarandon. Tucci is just all kinds of unsettling as the pedophile serial killer who is so methodical and so calculating it’s actually fun to watch him. Ronan also turns in a great performance as Susie and I look forward to seeing her in other things in the future; very talented young actor. Susan Sarandon is an adorable alcoholic grandma,and even though it’s not anything groundbreaking she’s doing here, I just really had a good time watching the scenes she was in.

Mark Wahlberg is serviceable as the grieving father, although not quite what I would’ve wanted out of the role. I don’t think he’s able to really lend enough weight to the role and although you can tell he’s going all out, he just narrowly gets the character. Rachel Weisz however is completely uninspired and while part of it is the disconnect her character is dealing with, most of it is just her being about as boring of an actor as can be.

There is a great movie in here, it’s just buried underneath the surface and you have to work a little harder to get something out of it for yourself. I recommend the movie on the basis that it features some good performances and although I’ve harped on it quite a bit, there are some interesting and cool artistic choices Jackson made. I won’t give those away, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.

Editor’s note, this contest was originally posted on 12/11/2009 and is no longer on going. ¬†Please congratulate our reader Brandy as she is the lucky winner of our first contest!

This won’t be our last so if you didn’t win, don’t cry for me Argentina.

It is with great pleasure and pride that we announce the first contest from Media Breach! ¬†And it’s even more awesome because we’re giving away a Blu-Ray or DVD copy (winner’s preference) of District 9 and two posters that I received at a screening of the film earlier this year. ¬†The posters are not the full size posters you see in theaters but are slightly smaller (around 20″ x 16″). This movie owns pretty hard so if you’re looking to score a copy, here’s your chance.

All you have to do is send us an email using the form below by December 22nd, include a quick blurb about what you think of The Breach, and you’re automatically entered! ¬†It’s not a lot to ask. Even if this is your first time to the site, just give us a quick comment and send away!

A winner will be randomly picked and announced by December 24th.  Both a copy and the posters will be shipped, free of charge, to the winner.

We are no longer accepting entries to this contest.

Only one entry per email address will be allowed. ¬†All duplicate emails will be purged. ¬†Shipping will take approximately 5-10 business days and the contest is limited to the contiguous United States of America. ¬†Please do not enter unless you can live with both of these requirements. ¬†If you happen to know us personally, fuck it, you can enter, too! ¬†If I still haven’t answered all your questions, email me and I’ll see if I can’t straighten you out. ¬†For the record, your email data is only used for entry and will not be used for marketing or any other purposes. ¬†I will delete the emails after the contest has been won.

That’s about how much I enjoyed D9- enough to write not one but three hyperbolic sentences akin to other online reviews.  This will easily rank in my top 5 films of the year.  I’m hoping that as time passes it will fall in line with other greats in the Science Fiction genre.  Even with my expectations for the film pretty high, I still wasn’t expecting this level of story, social commentary, special effects, and action/suspense.

District 9 presents us with a scenario where an alien spacecraft shows up in Johannesburg, South Africa around 1982.  It just seems to hover there until humans fly to it and drill through the outer wall to discover close to a million insect-like, bi-pedal creatures dying from starvation.  The government quickly sections off part of the slums to give the Prawns, as they are called, their own living space.  But as it is with such transactions, the humans are hoping to learn about the Prawn technology, primarily their weaponry, in exchange for providing them a new home.  To go any further regarding plot would ruin your viewing experience.  Suffice to say, lots of shit happens and it’s all pretty bad ass.

Probably more surprising than anything I came to expect, this film has some of the better action scenes I’ve seen in recent memory.  They easily trump Terminator Salvation or Transformers 2, making their respective set pieces slow and without any sense of danger for the characters.  The difference seems to be the innovation that director Neil Blomkamp brought to the table.  I firmly believe that more thought went into just the alien weaponry of D9 than did the entirety of either of those other two Sci-Fi extravaganzas.  To think that the film was made for $30 million and blows away two films made for eight times that just makes my head spin.  And is this the first R-rated action film released this summer or something?  Fuck me it’s great to see heads and bodies explode for a change.

Then there’s the Prawns themselves.  For the most part they look photorealistic and their interactions with the humans are unlike any human-alien relationship we’ve really seen in film; at least for films based on Earth.  The Prawns don’t come across as too dangerous.  They’re portrayed more like the homeless that typically propagate in the South African slums- scavenging for food and  pushing around wheeled baskets full of any resource they can dig out of the large bushels of garbage stacked next to their shacks.  The government in South Africa seems to have just brushed them under the rug, basically labeling them as non-essential.  Given that a new lower class has emerged, the Nigerians are now taking advantage of this alien race as opposed to low class humans.  I could talk about this shit for hours as you can see, but it’s really great that the Prawns aren’t just the backdrop for spectacle more so than they are an integral part of the environment this film covers.

I already feel like this review is running long and I have so much more I could discuss.  Not only is that a sign of a good Sci-Fi entry, it’s just a sign of a good movie in general.  District 9 is an excellent flick and I’m hoping it will find a huge audience when it releases on Friday.  If you have the opportunity, check it out.  I give it a very strong recommendation and know that I’ll be discussing it further down the road here on The Breach.