Elysium – Review

Matt Damon at Elysium Premiere, Sydney
Photo by Joseph Rana

Ever wondered how would animals, dogs, cats, tigers, so on, hence-forth, you get the drift, would fare in the distant future. I mean, don’t you reckon it is high-time Hollywood came up with a movie that’s based on animals and is set in future? We watched Elysium, and thought well, if the humans fare like this, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all!

The triad of an action movie, a science fiction and a social commentary—all crammed in a space of less than two hours of dramatized rift between the haves and the have-nots, Elysium is worth a watch largely for its out-of-the-ordinary visuals and not so much for a powerful plot or a witty entertainer.

Fast forward to 2154 on to a near dead-or-decaying Earth and the audience is regaled with oversized orbital station in the sky.

This is the world of the super rich, who assailed by poverty, filth, degradation, overpopulation and such like evils have emigrated here leaving their less fortunate brethren to fight a constant battle with squalor and crime ridden no-medical-succor world patrolled by robotic police.

Max de Costa [Matt Damon] is an ex-car thief working in a factory. While at work he gets irradiated. He is told that he has bare five days of living due to exposure to that lethal dose of radiation unless he can manage a passage to the cure-all-med world of Elysium.

Such a task is next to courting death for for Elysiam’s Secretaroy of Defence, Jessica Delacourt [Jodie Foster] employs evil mercenary Kruger [Sharlto Copley] to ensure illegal immigrants are annihilated.

Sharlto Copley at Elysium Premiere, Sydney
Photo by Joseph Rana

But Max must get the Med-Pod if he is to survive.

As his organs begin to fast slide into deterioration, his one single passion becomes the need to save himself, caring not even for the life of the sweet daughter of his girl-friend Frey. Nor does he seem to mind the risks involved in obtaining a ticket to Elysium in exchange for downloading vital data held in the brain of the industry big-wig billionaire CEO John Carlyle [William Fichtner].

Soon enough, however, Max gets embroiled in the viscous net of Delacourt.

Elysium proves itself to be just another take on the Hollywood obsession with futuristic explorations of apprehended aftermath post-cataclysm.

The film is so engrossed in its socialistic stance exploration and focus on health care needs and immigration issues that it even omits to develop a still-born love angle that could have lent Elysium its much needed emotive depth.
The many special effects comprising awesome visuals get dimmed by narrative overload.

The audience is left gasping for some more satire and wit that could mitigate the intermittent excess of too much noise and light.

Rating 2 stars

By Joseph Rana, Editor-in-Chief, His Master’s Review

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