TriStar Pictures, Media Rights Capital, QED International,
Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, William Fichtner, Alice Braga, Sharlto Copley, Diego Luna, Michael Shanks, Talisa Soto
The year is 2159 and like Wall-E, the greedy people of Earth have destroyed it. The planet is a mess, and the rich people have built a great space city called Elysium with beautiful gardens and homes, and high technology medical treatments that can cure anything. Meanwhile, the poor people on Earth are not allowed to go to Elysium unless they can afford it. They have to live with crime, disease, and poverty. Max (Matt Damon) has had a dream of escaping to Elysium since he was a small child, but his life has not worked out that way. Coming out of prison and trying to go straight, he’s forced into working with some unsavory characters to save his life. Meanwhile Delacourt (Jody Foster) is the security chief looking to oust the weak President and take control of Elysium in a sort of coup attempt.
Earth is a nasty place in 2159, all right. Obviously Obama has managed to push his immigration reform through, as Los Angeles is a real mess, and everyone speaks Spanish. What are the odds? Meanwhile all the white people have escaped to Elysium and locked the gates behind them. Don’t think this is an accident. This film made me feel a bit racist, just by being in the theater. Oh well, that aside…this is a very interesting sci-fi movie. It is expected to be really big, and I can’t really predict whether it’s going to catch fire or crash and burn. There is a mixed bag of acting as well. Matt Damon’s character could have been really interesting, but I’m afraid he underplayed it a bit. Jody Foster’s character has a fabulous opportunity to make us hate her. She’s a great villain and she has a chance to really make us hate her, but she’s underused, and it ends up we feel a little bit like she’s maybe right? So I never really got to hate her. On the good side, this movie is stunningly beautiful. The ugliness of Earth is still very well filmed, and the beauty of this space station world is stunning. It’s also a very thought provoking picture. I really enjoyed watching it, and it was a very pleasurable evening. I have heard a lot of criticism of the scientific possibility of the movie. There are a lot of complaints about such things as the exoskeletal suit or the space station’s atmosphere. I suppose I had thoughts about the same things while I was watching this, but I passed it off as unimportant issues. If you are going to get the message of the movie, you have to accept the world that it’s in. Granted that sometimes little things like this can kill the enjoyment, but I don’t think that’s fair in this particular story. There’s a limited amount of time, and taking the time to explain the environment would have really slowed down the film. So just accept the world as it is, and look deeper into the tale.
So this is not a perfect film, but it was very unusual, and very interesting. I really enjoyed it, and I think it was well worth watching.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Author: EdG
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