Elysium
Written and Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner.
In the year 2154, the world has become a post apocolypic, and dystopian wasteland – with the lower class trapped on earth, and the upper class have inhabited an outer space world of luxury in the design of Stanford torus. In this world, there is no aging, and no illness thanks to advanced Med Bays that heal any illnesses.
Max (Damon) is a career criminal who works as a factory worker for Armadyne Corp, a weapons manufacturer. One day he is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation in a horrible accident, and has five days to live. His goal is to get to Elysium and heal himself in one of the Med Bays.
He now faces an impossible task getting there, as there are other players in Elysium, like the corrupt Defence Secretary Delacourt (Foster), who wants to overthrow the government, and is using Armadyne CEO (Fichtner), and the brutal black ops agent Kruger (Copley) to do her bidding.
The cast all are fine, with all doing a fine job. Damon is able to handle the lead action star well. Foster does well at playing the antagonist, which is not a usual role for her to play, but it is Copley who plays the psychotic Kruger who is the MVP.
The screenplay is nothing remarkable, but it does what is intended. The score is pretty decent, and it had almost Hans Zimmer/David Julyan vibes to it.
The settings are a little weak too, with the ‘futuristic but dystopian earth’ approach touched upon early (talking to computers, they can scan heart rates etc), but characters have devices in their homes from 2010. Elysium itself is under portrayed as well, with only fractional time felt like it is spent there.
While there was nothing inherently wrong with the film, it didn’t blow me out of the water, and was just okay.
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