By Ken Parker
Why do I always set my self up for
disappointment? Elysium might have been my favorite movie of
the year had I not actually watched the movie this past weekend. It
has some good elements including Neill Blomkamp, who did a very good
job directing and writing District 9 in 2009. I like Jodi
Foster and Matt Damon has his moments. Sharlto Copley (District
9, Europa Report) is also someone I'd like to see more of
in movies. So what went wrong?
Major Spoilers...........
The movie fits right into the Blomkamp
style of story telling. We have a world and people who are poor,
over crowded and in decay and then we have the other side who are
rich and healthy. Elysium is an orbiting space station where the
rich people live. They have all the luxuries including lavish pools
and houses as well as robotic assistants and medical pods that heal
all kinds of damage including cancer, cuts, breaks, etc. Meanwhile
people on Earth, or at least L.A. live in ruins and garbage. They
are dirty, injured, sick and desperate. We see to what lengths
people will go to try to get to Elysium to use these medical pods at
the risk of their own lives.
Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-criminal who
is trying to keep his job and avoid falling back into his darker
times. He is stupidly irradiated during his job and only has days to
live. Now he sees no choice but to somehow get up to Elysium to use
one of those med pods.
Meanwhile the head of security on
Elysium, Delacourt (Jodi Foster) is very adamant that no unauthorized
people from Earth ever enter Elysium and she is unhappy with the way
the president is running things so she hatches a plot that will give
her control of the station. This requires an executive she
blackmails to input a virus into the main frame. The executive, John
Carlyle (William Fitchner) begins to return to Elysium in a shuttle
but is shot down by a group of terrorists who have teamed up with Max
in order to get to Elysium. They download Carlyle's mind in order to
get the codes to get to Elysium but also get Delacourt's plot to take
over the station.
Max is being pursued by bounty hunter
Kruger (Sharlto Copley) which leads to the majority of the action in
the film. Caught in the cross fire is Max's childhood friend, Frey
(Alice Braga) and her daughter, who is terminally ill. They all get
to Elysium and one by one attempt to complete their agendas of
getting a cure, sabotaging Elysium, taking over Elysium and so on.
Wow. Now the story is fine but a
number of coincidences and convenient happenings occur throughout the
film that really make it hard to believe. Max getting ill in the
first place makes little sense. He goes into a machine to free a
jammed door, knowing the door was going to close. He then has a
friend who knows a friend who happens to have a plan to attack
Elysium using exo armor, which is surgically grafted onto Max. His
friend from childhood has a kid who is dying and they are taken by
Kruger whose face is blasted off but is then repaired by the magic
med pod. Kruger then goes after Max and the most annoying fight of
the movie ensues.
Okay, there were a bunch of issues –
Where is everyone on Elysium? There seems to be only a few people
around, allowing the rebels free reign to run around and cause havoc.
In the end a fleet of medical ships are programmed to go to Earth to
start a mass curing of everyone but why are there this many and why
did this technology not exist on Earth in the first place?
Now, the cast was okay. Copley was
excellent and Damon was passable for the most part. Foster was
wasted. Was she just evil or did she have a reason to want to take
over and why did she give up so easily?
 |
| I am glad my injuries weren't so bad....... |
The story was pretty basic with a fair
amount of politics in it, as is Blomkamp's way. The look of the film
is superb and returning are the hyper realistic effects that helped
make District 9 so great. With effects and design well in
hand, Blomkamp seemed to let the script down on so many levels. The
ideas were fine but the amount of coincidences is staggering. The
virus rebooting Elysium and allowing all people access to the med
pods is a stretch and you would think reversible before too many
people are repaired. One can imagine everything going back to the
way it was within a few hours.
Anyhow, I enjoyed the look and the idea
but wished the execution was a bit better. The action was not as
polished as much of the rest of the film although I will say the gun
battle over the crashed shuttle was pretty good.
It is a visual movie and might benefit
from a theatrical viewing or at least an HD watch at home on a big
screen TV. I so badly wanted to like this film and like last year's Prometheus, enjoyed it enough to give it a rocky thumbs up. I would love to see more of Blomkamp's designs, effects and ideas but with a cleaner plot.
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