Elysium

elysium

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, William Fichtner, Wagner Moura

In the year 2154, Earth  has been divided between the rich living in a space station utopia where any disease can be cured instantaneously and the rest of the poor population has been left on dirty, dirty Earth.

I was a big fan of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. It did a great job selling the story and making  you care about the characters. This movie does not seem like it is coming from the same director, but more like it is from someone trying to copy his style. It is so lightweight. We barely get the feel of what it is like on Earth (filmed in part in a Mexico City landfill, which is scary in its own right) before the action gets rolling. I loved the parts with the robot parole officer and dispensing medication. I wish we had more of that before moving onto the next act. Once it moved into the more action part of the movie, everyone was easily divided into good guy and bad guy, but it was all on the surface. It would have been nice if there had been more backstory for characters played by Jodie Foster or William Fitchner. The only thing I learned was that Jodie Foster’s character had a very odd accent.

Elysium fight

I thought Matt Damon was great. He is always charming and does great job with his sarcastic one-liners. I wish there was more time spent on Kruger, played by Sharlto Copley. He was this wild-eyed character that was pretty much used for fighting, but could have been used so much more. I really enjoyed whenever he was on screen, but wanted him to do more than just fight. That said, the action scenes were entertaining to watch and what kept me going with the movie.

Too bad it all fell apart in the end with a solution that didn’t make much sense if you think about it in the long term. I think going into this movie, I had higher expectations based on District 9, so I was slightly disappointed. I wanted it to be a thinking science fiction action movie, but all the thoughts were taken by the rich people, I suppose.

Grade: B-

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