Health & Fitness
Movie Review: Elysium
Elysium
Elysium, the ancient Greek and Roman concept of an eternal, blessed afterlife for the virtuous and heroic among mankind, a concept that is at play on many levels in Neill Blomkamp’s return to silver-screen science fiction since District 9. True to his style, Blomkamp does not disappoint in not only pumping Elysium filled with political, social and economic (under)currents but also giving the protagonist some nifty technology and then having them use it for only a few scenes.
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Enter Max Da Costa (Matt Damon), a former convict turned honest blue collar worker whose lifelong dream (along with everyone else on a slowly decaying Earth) is to make it to Elysium, the heaven-like home of the wealthy orbiting the earth. On Elysium there is no sickness or crime or violence; it is an artificially constructed version of the ancient beliefs in the afterlife. Political corruption…well of course there’s that; not even the wand-waving med-pods can cure Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) of her ambitions. For Max reaching Elysium is not only a dream but a promise he made as a young boy to a young Frey (Alice Braga). But why should we care about a troubled small boy named Max who early on shows a proclivity for theft and like everyone else dreams of one day reaching paradise?
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Enter Armadyne assembly line, a somewhat uncaring floor manager, and an even less uncaring CEO. The special combination of poor working conditions and quota-focused officials leaves Max with only five days to live after he receives a lethal dose of radiation. Now we have a more dire motivation for our protagonist: get to Elysium within five days or die.
But it’s not as simple as that (thankfully or else we wouldn’t have a movie). By this time we’ve already seen Delacourt’s ruthless tactics for dealing with illegal citizens entering her turf. And in order to even have a chance of reaching Elysium, Max must descend back into the criminal underworld he managed to crawl out of by the movie’s beginning. To top it all off childhood friend (and possible love interest) Frey pleads him to take her terminally ill daughter and cure her as well. Max’s race for survival becomes a tight squeeze in morally unstable zone; all of his choices will have hard consequences, and they all must be made under the extreme pressure of Delacourt’s relentless assets and his rapidly ticking expiration clock.
Elysium delivers its fair share of emotionally touching moments, of moments to doubt whether Max is an actual protagonist or just a selfish jerk, and an abundance of both conspicuous and hidden social commentary. But for all the trailers and TV spots portraying the movie to be largely about Matt Damon beating everyone and anyone up in a rudimentary Iron Man suit the action was very limited. There was more Matt Damon running around injured than Matt Damon running around injuring people. Although, to Blomkamp’s credit, the action sequences are truly edge-of-your-seaters, complete with hard-hitting punches and just the right amount of gore. Overall, Elysium is an excellent way to pass a few hours.