Warning - this review contains spoilers that may ruin your enjoyment of the film, as I've found it impossible to review honestly without including this information. Suggest you don't read this one unless you've seen the movie. If you're not sure whether to see the movie, I'd rate this a 2.5 out of 5 and say that it passes the time but isn't anything new or particularly compelling.
I read a review of this movie recently which suggested it was the best blockbuster of the year so far. This really surprised me, because when I saw it, I thought it was okay but not that spectacular and I feel that it asked more questions than it had answers for, so it was a little bit of a let-down compared to the director Neill Blomkamp's previous intelligent sci-fi "District 9".
Elysium is a strangely topical release in Australia right now. The story is set on a 'near future' Earth where all the poor and sick people remain living in relative poverty, working in the dreary factories creating the robots that keep them all in line, and medical care is stretched to the limit; while the wealthy have left Earth and moved to a floating nirvana in space called Elysium, where they have endless leisure and advanced healthcare in the form of medi-pods which can heal anything instantly. To be in Elysium and use a medi-pod, you must be a registered citizen with a barcode. Occasionally, citizens of Elysium deign to travel to Earth to keep the robot production ticking along but they make sure their heavily armed robot guards are on hand at all times. Occasionally, citizens of Earth try to get to Elysium to beg for help, but they are either returned immediately to Earth or in some cases brutally shot down in outer space before they can even arrive. Does this sound familiar to anyone? The 'boat people' issue of people arriving on Australian soil by boat and claiming asylum has some very close parallels to the film's plot.
The film follows our 'hero' Max (played by a buffed up again Matt Damon) who has a bit of a dodgy past but is trying to stick to the straight and narrow. One day Max is involved in a workplace accident brought on by his dodgy foreman, ending up with extreme radiation poisoning and only five days to live. The company manager, John Carlyle (played with his usual slimy aplomb by William Fichtner) shows little sympathy to Max as he's essentially let go and left to die. So he goes back to the local 'people smuggler' Spyder and asks for help to get to Elysium so he can be healed. Spyder agrees to help Max with an illegal barcode and trip to Elysium on the condition he helps him with a mission he's had for a while - hijack a legal citizen and steal some important information that might help Spyder's ultimate objective to get all the illegals on Earth made legal members of Elysium.
Once Max embarks on his mission, the action really heats up as his hijack is picked up the 'Government' of Elysium that is constantly monitoring Earth, and a dangerous undercover operative kept on Earth (ham factor set to overdrive and outrageously bad South African accent by Sharlto Copley who was so good in District 9 - stick to playing good guys Sharlto and just use your normal South African accent please) sets out to stop him and an old flame he accidentally drags into it along with her sick daughter. Jodie Foster is the 'Secretary of State' on Elysium whose plans for world domination are disrupted, but her character is pretty wasted as we never really get to understand her motivations in full detail.
This is not a film for those with a weak stomach as there are a series of gruesome scenes included along with the more high-brown concepts. These gave me the giggles as we all cringed as bits of people went flying. But the action and gore are not enough to put you on the edge of your seat and I really felt that the biggest issues that could have been addressed are just pushed aside and not answered. If all the people on Earth are let into Elysium and healthcare is so advanced that nobody ever dies, how will the resources cope with this? Unless we've all evolved to not need food anymore by 2154, the mission is noble but the outcome could be a disaster. Overpopulation is a very real issue in real life, but it's brushed aside like an ant as the film looks for a happy ending for our heroes.
I'd be really interested to know, but probably never will, whether anyone who sees this movie and cheers Max on his mission, which is undoubtedly the right thing to do, then walks out and says that Australia's asylum seekers should be 'sent back to where they came from'. Because ultimately the asylum seekers are Max and the people on Earth, and Australia and its citizens are the Elysiums, just without the technology. I wonder how many will even realise the comparison. Food for thought, but just as there are no easy answers to the issue in real life, there are no answers provided by this movie either.
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