Review: Elysium

What shenanigans should I expect?:  A paroled thief in the exact type of dystopian future Earth you would expect from the director of District 9 dreams of getting to the fat cat enclave of Elysium.  After an industrial accident leaves him with 5 days to live, he starts looking at desperate and highly implausible options to get there.

What’s the lowdown?:  I should admit right off the bat that I have a William Fichtner rule.  Any movie featuring William Fichtner is automatically 10% better than it would have been without him.  Which is important in the case of Elysium, since the movie unfortunately ends up needing some elevation.

It’s not that the film is bad, it’s just uneven.  In fact, the last block of it, really takes off.  But it’s hard to get past the fact that we spend most of the film with a fairly uncompelling character in Max.  There’s nothing wrong with Matt Damon in the role.  He certainly gives it his all. But Max is little more than a disconnected ex-con without much going on that effects anyone other than him.  Until that changes, it is very hard to care much what happens to him.

Yes, it sucks that he gets in trouble for making a joke to roboguards, but he’s been living around these things his whole life, so it mostly makes him look stupid.  And it totally sucks that he gets blasted with a lethal dose of radiation (shown in the trailers so don’t go screaming spoiler alert at me).  But his life was mostly going to be a long slog through disappointment and mediocrity at best, so what is he really losing other than a longer miserable life.

Then we have the politics on Elysium, with most of the habitat wanting to treat Earth illegals with some compassion, and Jodie Foster as Defense Secretary Delacourt who believes in a kill first and don’t ask questions approach.  Of course, her job would hardly be necessary if the idiots on Earth didn’t keep trying to fly spacecraft to Elysium that are 99% certain to get blown the fuck up.  In fact, the more I think about it, there’s hardly anybody in this film that doesn’t act like an idiot at least 50% of the time.

There are two notable exceptions to this.  Sharlto Copley as an Earth bound Elysium agent named Kruger is brutal, self-serving, and completely aware of what’s going on and his place in all of it.  It’s a stunning departure from anything I’ve seen him do before, and he is great in the role.  We also get Alice Braga as Frey, a childhood friend of Max’s who has grown up into a super hot nurse.  She is pragmatic, kind, and has a daughter who will become important to making the film more interesting, though a little too late.  One particular scene when Kruger needs to interrogate Frey, but doesn’t want her daughter to see, is probably the strongest in the film.

Now I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time comparing this to District 9, but to some degree it’s inevitable.  The look is almost identical, and the idea that power can only be obtained through great personal cost is still a main theme.  But where the two fundamentally depart, and to the detriment of Elysium in my opinion, is that District 9 was about a man of the system being forced outside of it.  It worked brilliantly.  Elysium takes a man outside the system who is trying to get in.  On its own that set up is much more common place, and far less compelling to watch.

And as a final note, while I did enjoy that Max’s journey at the end was much more epic than how it began, he does basically Forrest Gump his way into a critically important mission for the entire Earth.  In retrospect it’s all just a little too silly.

Rating – 6/10