To have and (make sure) to have not… or my review of Elysium ****

Elysium is a…well, is a great movie. I hesitated there only because I was going to say  “is a great science fiction movie" and while this is most definitely a science fiction movie,  I think Neill Blomkamp had too many balls in the air for me to champion this movie as classic science fiction. From the heavy emphasis on action mixed in with all the commentary on poverty, pollution, and health care etc… he had chainsaws, bowling balls and bowling pins in the air for this juggling act… But don’t get me wrong this is about as good as it gets with film making and story telling. Personally I thought the heavy emphasis on the action made it loose some of the overall effectiveness on all the other social commentary it had going for it. To me, by definition, great social commentary is something that all great science fiction has. And while I think Neil had great aspirations for doing just that he also had an eye on the box-office potential of super-hero level box-office potential.

What's interesting is I saw this with a conservative friend who also likes science fiction but in hindsight it’s something I should have asked them about because liking science fiction HAS to be at odds with much of their regular day to day thinking .

The Elysium space station

Matt Damon

Most of the best science fiction rally against corporations out of control, or rally the against the repression of freedom of thought and expression, fighting  the corruption of power and money, human rights over misguided self righteous morals etc… all those things his political party usually stands for…. And while they were typically busy with counting the number of “F-bombs”  rather than counting the number of crimes against humanity, all the action I think helped mask the extremes of the ‘haves’ against the ‘have nots’ and it's "class warfare" message. This way it did not seem to offend their senses the way the director's previous attempt at the allegories of apartheid and all ‘the good things it had to offer’, that were so well played out in his District 9. And speaking of that movie... considering the relatively tiny budget he worked with on that one, it was very interesting to see him balance the "brain and brawn" with the slick and fantastic look of this film with it's much bigger budget.

Matt Damon  Alice Braga

But aside of all the "action versus message" in this film what I really liked was some of the turns this film took. Every time this movie started to head in a predictable direction Neil would throw in a curve ball, literally crashing things to the ground like when they were delivering the prisoners to the orbiting space station Elysium. Now there may have been a few stretches of believably in the plot where Matt Damon's character Max just happens to get a lethal dose of radiation that sends him on his suicidal mission, at the exact same time Jodie Foster's character Delacourt, the security leader of the one-precenters on Elysium is planning a coup, but these complaints are minor when dealing the humanity Matt Damon’s character builds up as Max trying to save all those on Earth in particular his childhood friend Frey(Alice Braga) and her sick daughter that needing to get to the instant healing only available on Elysium.

Jodie Foster

Now, Richard Roeper called Jodie Foster’s acting something like the worst performance in the history of film, or something like that, while Peter Travers said she was “killing it, as a Dick Cheney in heels.” I was probably somewhere in the middle. And while I would be hard pressed to particularly defend the locked jawed grit she was grinding out, the Cheney comment is laughably accurate.  In particular, I liked the fact she was not ‘chewing the scenery’ as is often the case with great actors in villainous roles.

Sharlto Copley

So the idea of how rich people really don’t care if poor people have access to medical care is scarily reflective of today’s world… just look… yet another vote by old rich white dudes against health care for the poor is in today’s headlines… and taking the idea of unregulated corporations polluting the world to climate changing levels wrapped up around several cool gun battles, and fight scenes between a exoskeleton enhanced Matt Damon and psycho villain Kruger(Sharlto Copley)  can seem a bit flippant, or incongruous, still...I walked away from this film extremely entertained and yes even intellectually challenged, so having said everything I just said, it really is a great ‘science fiction movie’… “f-bomb” ? “Was there?  ‘spose so… and how many tattoos did they have?”