Elysium is easily the most disappointing of this summer’s big-budget sci-fi action films. Thinly-written, poorly acted, and featuring action sequences that utilize “shaky-cam” far, far too much, the film is a boring, bloody mess that also takes it upon itself to dole out a heavy-handed and extremely cynical message regarding class warfare and man’s inhumanity to man, apparently because director Neill Blomkamp thinks we haven’t heard that sermon enough times yet.
If you’ve seen the trailers for the film, you know the film’s basic set-up. In the mid-22nd Century, Earth is a war-torn, overpopulated, and disease-ridden scrap heap which serves as home to the poor masses of humanity struggling simply to survive. Meanwhile, high above in Earth’s orbit, on the glittering, high-tech space station called Elysium, the wealthy elite live in comfort while turning a blind eye to the misery below. On Elysium, death, disease, and conflict are things of the past — disease, in particular, is a distant memory, as every palatial home is equipped with a “med-bay” that can scan the human body down to the cellular level, identify any potential health risks, and systematically eradicate them, thus making the population virtually immortal. And of course no one on Elysium feels the slightest bit of remorse or guilt over the comforts they enjoy while those on Earth suffer and die. Why would they? No wealthy person in power EVER cares about poor people, right?
In charge of protecting the sanctity and security of Elysium is Defense Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster), who is equally comfortable sipping champagne and mingling with Elysium’s residents as she is ordering her top wetworks agent, Kruger (Sharlto Copley), to shoot down refugee shuttles attempting to reach Elysium and have the station’s security robots hunt down any surviving stragglers. Delacourt enforces the status quo, and she regards any and all threats to that status quo with fanatical disdain. Imagine Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men, only female and with a full head of perfectly-coiffed blonde hair.
Matt Damon plays Max, a factory worker on Earth with a criminal past he’s trying to leave behind. As a child living in an orphanage, Max befriended Frey (played as an adult by Alice Braga), and the two dreamed of someday getting to Elysium, just as all children in this world apparently do. Max has no such dreams now — he just wants to do his job and stay out of trouble; that is, until he’s a victim of the heartless management and unsafe working conditions at his factory. Left with only days to live, suddenly all that matters to Max is getting to a med-bay on Elysium. His life may be miserable and sad, but he’s not quite ready to give up on it yet.
To save that life, Max will need Frey’s help, and also an assist from Spider (Wagner Moura), an black marketeer and would-be revolutionary who works tirelessly to crack Elysium’s defenses in order to sneak refugees onto the station and away from Earth’s depravity. But their efforts only serve to put Max square in the sights of Delacourt and Kruger, as he inadvertently becomes the key to subverting Elysium’s population identification systems and thus the entire social order. Cue brutal fight scenes, bodies both human and robotic being blown into tiny bits by guns and explosives, and lots of close-ups of Matt Damon’s sweating, grimacing face and shaved head.
Elysium was supposed to be Neill Blomkamp’s triumphant big-budget follow-up to his critically and commercially successful 2009 breakthrough, District 9, and there’s much of that film’s aesthetic here, at least superficially. He returns to the theme of people’s willingness to dehumanize and degrade what they regard as different or threatening to them, and he even recruits Copley, his star from District 9, to fill the screen here again in front of scenes depicting dilapidated and deplorable human living conditions that have come to be regarded as the norm. Blomkamp seems to be fascinated with man’s capacity for casting a blind eye upon suffering that’s practically staring them in the face, if only just to preserve their own frail sense of peace and security, and he takes every opportunity afforded in Elysium to take his shots and preach his message.
But its there that the similarities end. District 9 was a character-driven piece that got its point across primarily by telling the story through the eyes of an everyman, a cog in the system, someone who only realizes the horror of what he’s been a part of once he literally begins transforming into one of the oppressed. There’s ample opportunity to connect and identify with that protagonist’s horror, confusion, and eventual understanding of the social injustices he had condoned and been a part of, because the film moves methodically and takes its time in building up to its climax and resolution.
In contrast, Elysium is purely plot-driven, and it’s paced so relentlessly that you have virtually no opportunity to connect in any meaningful way with Max or his situation. He’s an ex-con and his life, along with that of everyone else on Earth, basically sucks. And nobody on Elysium, not a single soul, apparently, gives a hoot. Wealthy = bad. Oppressed = good. It’s that simplistic — it has to be in order for the film to get to its flashy, expensive-looking but almost incomprehensible action sequences — and thus it makes a mockery of the very social issues it tries to beat you over the head with.
It doesn’t help that characterization here is as dumbed down as the explanation of the social status quo. Max is a likeable loser dealt bad break after bad break. Frey is his saintly would-be better half. Kruger is a murderous, sadistic sociopath, and Delacourt is a ruthless, would-be tyrant. That’s it. One note for each lead, one card to play for each of these talented performers capable of bringing far richer and more challenging material to life.
Foster’s presence here is especially troubling and baffling: why would such an accomplished actor/director with a track record for layered, nuanced performances agree to take on the part of such an underwritten stock villain? Perhaps in earlier drafts of the script there was rhyme and reason provided for Delacourt’s hardline attitudes and heartless self-righteousness, and for her strangely-accented speech which sounds vaguely as though she’s trying to sound French. It’s a bizarre, almost random affectation that detracts even further from a performance that hopefully she’ll make forgettable with her next lead role, whatever that might be.
Score: 2 out of 5
Elysium
Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner. Directed by Neill Blomkamp.
Running Time: 109 minutes
Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout.