ELYSIUM (2013) – The Review

Mulling over this new film opening up today, I thought of an inversion of the ole’ “Lone Ranger” TV/ radio intro…” Return with us now to those depressing days of future-year”. For the third time (I’m not going to count PACIFIC RIM, as some have) in nearly four months here’s another flick about a ravaged, almost uninhabitable, beat-up Planet Earth. In last April’s OBLIVION and a couple of months later in AFTER EARTH, the population has left the big blue marble and have set up shop on a nearby planet. Seems the only futuristic feature with any optimism this Summer was STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS (but there were those bothersome Klingons). At least old Mom Earth has not been completely vacated in ELYSIUM, but it’s far from a paradise. Perhaps writer/director Neill Blomkamp can put an interesting spin on this theme with his follow-up effort to his breakthrough work DISTRICT 9, a futuristic fable that addressed a big modern-day concern: immigration. This new film also tackles another subject from today’s headlines, the class system. So has Blomkamp hit the bullseye once again with this new SF allegory?

A title card takes us to the far-off year of 2154 with a shot of a crumbling cityscape. Earth is practically a burned-out husk. The well-off upper classes have left the diseased rock and are living on a space station named Elysium, an idyllic paradise with constant pleasant temperatures, vibrant greenery, and spiffy devices known as “med-pods”. Designed to function only for Elysium citizens, it resembles a tanning bed with a glowing rod that passes over the patient. It repairs any injuries, cures all diseases, and stops the ravages of age allowing one to live forever. Back on Earth we meet a new arrival at an orphanage, Max. He immediately bonds with a young girl named Frey and the two dream of one day going to the space station. Adult Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-con (grand theft auto, assault, resisting arrest) who tries to stay out of trouble while working at a factory that builds security robots who function as law enforcement officers. After a run in with the police robots, Max goes to an over-crowded hospital and reconnects with the adult Frey (Alice Braga), now a doctor and single mother caring for her very ill young daughter (her only hope is one of those med-pods). Back on the job an accident exposes Max to lethal amounts of radiation. With only days to live, his only chance is Elysium. Because of his criminal record, he’s not allowed access, so Max contacts an underground, illegal society that sends unauthorized shuttles to the station. Max can’t pay their ticket fee, so he volunteers to acquire travel codes from his former factory boss, Carlyle (William Fichtner) who also has a reboot program that will enable Delacourt (Jodie Foster) to become president of Elysium. After being outfitted with an exo-skeleton, Max and his crew take down Carlyle’s shuttle, which prompts Delacourt to send her agent on Earth, the brutal renegade enforcer Kruger (Sharlto Copley), to retrieve the program. Can Max prevail and get to a med-pod before he succumbs to the poison  inside him?

Once again Damon is the thinking man’s action hero here. He wants to just got about his business and do his job. But he knows that because of his past, he’ll never be able to live in that palace in the clouds. He does let his frustration show in his confrontations with authority (note: robots don’t get sarcasm). It’s not until he gets his exoskeleton, that Damon goes into standard action mode ala’ Jason Bourne. We still get a glimpse os sadness in his eyes even as he’s dashing about and dodging bullets. Unfortunately Max’s adversaries are not nearly as interesting, particularly the films main villain. I could never really understand the odd acting choices that Foster made as the plotting politico. The film truly grinds to a halt as she alternates between speaking French and English (with a halting accent) while marching down endless walkways spewing orders through clinched teeth. After the shrill performance in CARNAGE I had looked forward to her turn to the dark side. This is a major misstep in her considerable resume’. Foster’s weapon on the ground is Copley in full, leering neanderthal mode. While some folks have enjoyed his brutal aggressive style, I quickly grew weary of his strutting about and screaming in his South African patois (sounding a bit Aussie at times), spewing threats (“Ahhhlll make yuuu mahhh wafff!!”). I was more than a bit relived when it looked like he was out of commission. My joy was short-lived. The great Diego Luna has little to do as Max’s sidekick, besides getting him to the smugglers. Braga has a nice chemistry with Damon, but  she’s reduced to a damsel in distress (with daughter in tow) for most of the film. Fichtner is a terrific efete snob (“Don’t breathe on me!” Cover your mouth!”). Would’ve been great to see a bit more of him (and a whole lot less of Kruger).

ELYSIUM’s first third is a nice bit of satire about class distinction (a major topic in the last big election). The “one-percenters” are deserving of the station’s bounties while the rest must scrounge on a scorched homeworld. Max’s dealings with the thuggish police robots are a wonderful commentary on “zero tolerance” while his droning mechanical parole officer is a great jab at mindless civil servants. The ultimate irony is that Max must slave away making the robots that will soon be harassing him. Oh, and the med-pods are a cool bit of SF gadgetry much like the automatic surgical bays in PROMETHEUS. Unfortunately once the exoskeleton is fixed onto Max (a truly gruesome scene that earns the R rating), the film goes right into standard action mold with countless firefights and vehicles crashing and exploding (usually in slow slo-mo which is jarring after the disorienting shakey-cam shots for most of the film). Blomkamp came up with a great idea about the haves and have-nots. It’s a shame he didn’t keep at it instead of putting his ideas in service of another Summer sci-fi shoot ’em up and blow ’em up. Let’s hope that next time he follows through on an imaginative set-up. Who knows, maybe it’ll be set in a future that’s actually wonderful! Now that would be a shocker!

3 Out of 5