Elysium - Movie Review

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It’s 140 years in the future–and Earth has handled its problems of disease, pollution, and overpopulation by moving the rich off-planet to an idyllic habitat called Elysium. It’s a utopia, for ultra rich citizens only.

On Earth, Max (Matt Damon) is living a life of drudgery, working in a factory owned by the very, very rich John Carlyle (William Fichtner). He’s trying to walk the straight and narrow, but his past as a criminal legend makes things difficult. He has a bad day, including a run-in that shows he still has major problems with authority, while trying to reconnect with his childhood sweetheart Frey (Alice Braga), who is now a successful nurse.


Max has connections with the seamy side of town, too–led by black marketeer Spider (Wagner Moura). The lure of the quick and easy dollar instead of drudgery is always there.

But on a really, really bad day? The last straw tips the balance and the fun begins.

On Elysium, Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster) is answerable only to President Patel (Faran Tahir)–she chaffs at the restrictions she works under to keep the station safe. When things get out of hand, she turns to Kroger (Sharlto Copley) to get things done and that is when things really get interesting.

Where Delacourt is dispassionate and calculating, Kroger is unpredictable. He brings the crazy. This is the A-Team’s Murdock times a hundred, and with creepy thrown in. His interactions with Frey are truly scary–by then the audience knows he has no boundaries, no lines he won’t cross.

Max has a pretty standard hero’s journey sort of thing going on, with plenty of obstacles to fight his way through (literally and philosophically). Yet, for all that, Max ends up both earnest and somehow bland.

For those interested in the science fiction aspects–don’t look too close. The exo-skeleton isn’t well-explained, and probably shouldn’t work the way it’s presented. The space station design is driven by the requirements of the plot, and as such, doesn’t make a lot of sense. How the world got to this point, where huge resources are going to produce a multitude of robots to keep order, rather than to medical technology to accomplish the same thing (the stick instead of the carrot) is not explained.

The social commentary (Blomkamp previously wrote and directed District 9) is upfront and a bit in-your-face, but it’s where this one shines. It makes for an interesting look at what lengths people will go to while defending their way of life, particularly when they have a lot to lose, and what people will do to achieve utopia.

If you enjoyed District 9, this one will fall in your sweet spot, and it’s a must see for fans of Sharlto Copley.

Circle of Trust
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Legally It’s Wrong
Morally it’s Questionable