[Movie Review] Elysium (2013)

Posted on August 16, 2013 by thegrandshuckett in Movie Reviews // 0 Comments

Plot Summary: Set in the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Writer: Neill Blomkamp

Runtime: 109 min

Main Cast:

Matt Damon as Max DeCosta
Jodie Foster as Secretary of Defense Delacourt
Sharlto Copley as Agent Kruger
Alice Braga as Frey
William Fichtner as John Carlyle

Review: by Anthony and Lee

Knowing Elysium was from the director and co-writer of District 9, Neill Blomkamp, we were very excited to see it. The addition of Matt Damon and Jodie Foster to that great Sci-Fi director made it a must see on opening weekend for us. We could only hope that our high praises and expectations were met.

What We Liked:

The visuals were really good. The scenes on Elysium, shot in Vancouver, looked like the perfect home for the affluent and privileged while the scenes in Los Angeles, shot in Mexico City, looked like the slums of a third world country. The sets were truly fantastic.

The plot had immense potential. The set up was interesting and could have developed into something great, but the key words here are “could have.”

What We Didn’t Like:

The characters ruined the movie. Matt Damon’s character was unlikable. He was completely selfish, making it difficult to root for him as the hero, and the movie lacked the character development to make us believe him capable of the turnabout necessary for him to save everyone. Possibly even worse, Frey’s daughter was completely unnecessary, as was her story about the hippo and the meerkat. That story was horrible, and Matt Damon’s reaction to it was ridiculous. If the little girl was his daughter, it would have made more sense, but she wasn’t. A little re-writing could have made Frey the one in need of medical assistance.

In addition to sub-par characters, the majority of the acting was terrible, especially in the case of Spider. He was over the top and unbelievable as the head of a criminal organization, and he had a really bad accent. There were a lot of cringe-worthy accents going around.

Aside from the characters, there were several other issues. For example, there were several flashback scenes that did not do any character or plot development. They showed one thing and bludgeoned the audience with it every time. If the movie had begun with Frey leaving to study to become a nurse and the flashbacks were to their childhood, the flashbacks would have been an asset, and the movie would have been better developed. Alas, the flashbacks were to the same thing they showed at the beginning of the movie.

To make matters worse, the camera work during many of the action/fighting scenes was almost headache inducing because of the shakycam look.

The biggest disappointment of all, though, was central to the plot. There are going to be some spoilers from here out, so skip ahead to the overall section if you still plan on seeing the movie.

Everybody’s main motivation for going to Elysium was not to live in the fancy mansions and swim in the huge pools. No, they wanted the cure-all med bays. At the end of the movie, after Elysium’s system has been re-coded to make all of Earth’s population citizens of Elysium, the system sends out multiple emergency aircraft, holding approximately 10 med bays each, to heal all of the sick on Earth. If everyone on Elysium had a med bay in their home, why did they need hangars of medical aircraft? Furthermore, if they had the resources and they really wanted to keep the citizens of Earth away, why didn’t they just heal them? It made no sense.

Summary

The cons definitely outweighed the pros on this movie. It had a lot of potential, but it just didn’t measure up to our expectations. It was a bit of a failure.

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