Elysium [DVD]

Neil Blomkamp has done it again and shown us that "District 9" was not a one-trick pony. His part-dystopian, part-visionary look into a futuristic Earth set in the 22nd century is a fantastic spectacle laced with some social commentary.Matt Damon plays the hero of this action-drama set in a future in which human society on Earth has suffered significant decay. Those with wealth and means have escaped the planetary bounds to live in an artificial ring-world habitat called Elysium in orbit about the planet. As the story unfolds, it soon becomes clear that those who live in Elysium are in power and have the best that modern science and technology has to offer to support their lives, while the masses on Earth live in squalor in a police-state society.Damon's character is a factory worker with a criminal past that is just scraping by when misfortune enters his life. The only way out for him is to reach Elysium, but citizens from Earth are apparently almost never allowed to go there. His journey to try to get there requires desperate measures that set up an action-driven plotline laced with elements of drama and a bit of political intrigue.I love both the look and intensity of this film. Neil Blomkamp shows us a future that is technologically-advanced in a plausible way , but that also contains some sobering and somewhat terrifying elements. The story is accessible and easy to relate to without unnecessary complication, and yet the society we are shown has a depth and complexity that makes it compelling and all too real. Although we are not given much of the history that leads to this future, it is not hard to extrapolate from certain elements of current human society and accept this as one plausible outcome.I would have loved to have spent more time being immersed in this world, but what's there is a self-contained story that should leave most viewers satisfied with time well spent. Our solace for having to leave is that Blomkamp is still early in his career as a writer and director, and we can hope to see much more of his creativity and storytelling in years to come.

Had no problem watching the movie

Entertaining

Blonkamp's vision is soo original and developed in extreme depth, it's hard not to be completely fascinated by the world he proposes. Even for brief scenes, enormous amounts of prop development and preproduction are brought to bear. This movie is very well edited, and very economic in it's character development. The memory scenes of Max and a small boy are so critical to our understanding of the antagonist. I have watched this movie over 20 times, and I still love the pace. There is no movie structured like this. There are some huge leaps that are easy to accept once you understand that they each move the action forward at a hectic rate. This movie starts off at 100% and there is not a single moment to rest until the end. One thing I like about Blonkamp's aesthetic is how character death is never the result of a bullet being fired, though there are many fired. He likes to display the cheapness and uselessness of bullets, preferring a sword, a fist fight, or some exotic explosive to be the killing blow. This is a stand alone movie, it begins and ends very conclusively. I wish it could have been universally popular enough for a company to make toys, because the robots and airships are soo awesome. The scene of Damon getting roughed up by the street cop robots is some of the best cinema of all time.

Well Earth has gone to los peros as signified by everyone now speaking Spanish, living in a trash strewn graffiti laden environment reeking of taco smoke and who is either an unemployed car thief or employed “on the line” building the robots that mercilessly enslave them. And up in the sky is Elysium where they speak French, drink champagne and where Jody Foster is a Defense Minister whose first act in the movie is to take out the illegals trying to, oh please, “immigrate” illegally to Elysium using special, you guessed it, Homeland Security agents who fire missiles at the illegal shuttles which aside from carrying multicultural illegals are also strewn with trash which floats about the gravity free cabin while the sweating multicultural illegals pray and cry because that’s what people do when they’re fleeing towards something. Throw in Matt Damon and let’s call him “Max” as the poor put upon “worker” with a criminal past and who, as a victim of big business, is given a choice to either enter the radioactive chamber to push a button, because apparently even robots rate higher on the socioeconomic ladder than actual people. Sure. All that is really just the backdrop so a CEO from Elysium who has to mingle with the masses in his factory gets to remind one of the lesser beings not to breathe on him. Yawn. Ok, we’re almost done with the clichés but not quite. Jodie gets in trouble for shooting down the illegals and gets to ask the President if he has children. You’d think she’d know the answer to that. He only says no so she has an opportunity to use the old, “well if you did then you wouldn’t second guess my methods to protect what we have built here.” Sound familiar? I’m already suspecting she didn’t actually “build” that although she may have purchased the labor of those who did but like any them vs us, the them seem to not understand that paying for something is not the same thing as building something. But I digress. I’m 32 minutes into this movie and I already know how it’s going to end. Sure there’s a love interest who happens to have a child with an illness. And our newly radioactive hero who has just moments to live and a black market way to get them both up to Elysium for a cure. Yeah cuz that will work.I must say Jodie Foster is sexy and alluring as a business mom with a bad French accent who wants to rule the world by engineering a coup. Meanwhile back on Earth our hero goes through a chop shop op to, oh I don’t know, become a borg. Ok, so there’s nothing conspicuous about that, he’s going to just fit right in. It’s also comforting to know in 2150-something thugs still wear do rags. You know it’s not going to end well for anyone but did you know the code for bad spy is an English accent? Well now you do. You can also feel comfort in the knowledge sophisticated defense robots have the same bad aim as human bad guys when they’re firing at the good guy. Don’t make Max mad or he’ll be a, wait for it, Mad Max. Sigh. So let’s recap. Useless diseased masses speak Spanish, evil spy hit men speak Cockney and elites, even those named Patel, wield bad French accents.When all else fails call out the drones. And at one point they do just that. We’ve already stopped caring what data Max is carrying that now makes him a target but that usually happens when a script is written to support action sequences rather than plot. Have I mentioned how flawlessly perfect Jodie Foster is with designer hair, clothes and bad French accent? So Max now has Elysium’s operating system stored in his head so he could, theoretically, control Elysium. Of course any space engineers capable of building such a world would never ever have a back up on, say a thumb drive, because if they did that would kind of make the whole movie pointless. But Max thinks he can save the world by unlocking Elysium for everyone.I suppose the fact Elysium is a giant wheel and in spite of having no roof manages to retain atmosphere is one continuity issue too many but apparently hospitals are also no longer necessary because every home has a healing machine, I suppose to handle the daily terminal diseases the inhabitants rarely need. It’s simply a wonder of Imagineering that they seem to be placed near the kitchen because, well, who knows why? Does it even matter? We know we’re going to see the whole thing coming down in figurative flames at the end after the first five minutes because no cliché is wasted on this bloody, violent excuse for a film. And with one computer entry – earth population-legal - Mad Max saves the world – and no one, absolutely no one, has the computer hackem sackem stuff to stop the upload that reoots Elysium and makes it free for everyone. How socialist. This was a horrible movie that probably felt good making because it feeds the poor, downtrodden couch potatoes the lie that a fair society is possible. And yes the “dialect coach” got an undeserved credit at the end as did Seasons Fine Foods catering. I’m so glad I waited til it was $4.99 to rent as I was tempted on several occasions to pay the $12.99 because I really do love sci-fi but this was just sigh-fi.

Fantastic movie simply a must see