perhaps this film is Better Up There too?

Elysium
Director: Neil Blomkamp
Writer: Neil Blomkamp
Starring: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster

Director Neil Blomkamp returns to sci-fi, four years after making a name for himself with District 9.  Where he tried, and mostly failed, with District 9 at making an honest political statement, Elysium also starts off with much promise and a unique premise, but quickly dissolves into a paint-by-number action flick with out any real consequences for our main character.  In the same way District 9 misguidedly gave up on it’s interesting apartheid, documentary-style format, Elysium quickly gives up on its ‘border crossing’ political storyline, to ill-effect.  

In 2154, the earth has become nearly inhabitable.  Disease, crime, and overpopulation have forced the world’s wealthiest citizens to leave and create a more hospitable place in space - called Elysium.  On Elysium everything is better - no sickness, no crime, and 0% unemployment.  Perfection.  Down on earth, Max De Costa (Matt Damon) is just barely surviving, one of the few lucky ones to have a full-time job.  He works at an Elysium subsidized manufacturing plant which churns out the robots who then keep the peace on earth.  Ironic when Max at one point is attacked by one.  Through a flashback, you learn as a child, Max had a female friend named Frey.  No actual and worthy connection between the two is attempted and she becomes a disposable character, yet we’re forced to spend way too much time with her.  She’s a nurse, so there becomes two very convenient ways in which Max is able to run into her again - after ‘all these years.’  During a particularly bad day on the job, Max is exposed to radiation.  But, the kind of radiation that leaves you unscathed.  Unscathed until five days later when your organs suddenly give out.  Why five days?  Well, one day is too short and ten days we’d get board.  Less than a week?  Exciting.    

There’s one good sequence towards the beginning of the film where around 100 citizens of earth attempt to illegally cross into Elysium airspace.  A smuggler, going by the name of Spider, sells illegal ID’s, puts them on ships, and sends them to space.  As you can imagine, it doesn’t go well for them.  Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster) orders the ships shot down - and two of the three successfully are.  The third manages to land, yet its passengers are immediately caught and returned to earth.  It’s an exact reenactment of what happens along our border with Mexico on a daily basis.  Only, in space.  If the story had continued down this path, instead of turning sharply to a political overthrow, then turning again to a military coup - it could have been a scathing indictment on our own society.  By becoming a convoluted and generic action flick, it lost a lot of the goodwill it created at the beginning. 

Max realizes that Elysium is his only hope of curing the radiation slowly affecting his organs.  Spider is willing to smuggle him in, for a favor.  He has to download the ‘thoughts’ of an Elysium billionaire - for banking information.  He choses the owner of his robot plant, as a vendetta.   What Max and Spider don’t realize, is this billionaire who happens to know the codes that can easily wipe out he Elysium government and install a new president, which would be Secretary Rhodes!  Wait, you ask, she can order the killing of earth’s citizens without being the highest one in charge?  Yes!  Someone has the ability to completely change the Elysium government with a single keystroke?  Yes!  And somehow Max now has this information implanted into his brain?  Yes!  Also on Max’s tail is Kruger (Sharlto Copley), a mercenary hired by Rhodes to arrest him.  However, Kruger becomes another kink in the screenplay.  A distraction of what the original story was.  While all this is happening Max never seems to care about himself.  And he definitely doesn’t care about anyone else.  Well, there’s Frey, but that whole storyline is a lost cause.  Without giving us an emotional core, we don’t care either.  Why Blomkamp, who also wrote the script, decided to abandon the original illegal immigrant storyline is baffling.  The end result is underwhelming.  

The film does look pretty.  The effects, as in District 9, are extremely well done and seamlessly integrated into the film.  The Academy might as well hand over the Visual Effects Oscar now.  The acting is decent - what you’d expect from Damon and Foster in  a script without much emotional tension.  Copley is, unfortunately, over the top.  Blomkamp’s directing is a bit sloppy and way too reliant on slow motion.  Anytime he builds tension, he deflates it by slowing down the action.  The editing, on a scale of Sergio Leone to Michael Bay leans very much towards the Bay side of the scale.  Which is unfortunate because the robot effects are well done.  It would have been nice to see them in action more clearly.  Blomkamp has potential, but he might have to admit that his scripts need a second writer.