Elysium

This film is getting pretty good reviews for a summer action flick. With the script/direction by Neill Blomkamp of District 9 fame and success along with big names Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, it has high potential and expectations. I was sorely disappointed. Damon plays a "regular guy" in 22nd century Los Angeles. That is, he was once thief and is now straightening his life out, working a factory job and keeping a low profile. The setting is quite good here, with the entirety of Los Angeles as a slum, with all manufacturing some variation of sweatshop labor conditions. The world created and visualized by Blomkamp is engaging and detailed. But the story does not fulfill expectations. Damon has an accident at work, has a few days to live and desperately works to break into Elysium, the orbiting space station for the ultra-rich, which contains medical help to cure his (or any) incurable disease. Elysium (the station) is in itself ridiculous in concept, practice and presentation. I suppose I won't even bother with the practicality since this same film gives us a Darth Maul like light saber that functions as a shield for bullets. If you accept that, you must accept everything. Even so, there was no tension and no drama. Damon's character is a working class factory man and he approaches his entire change-the-political-status-quo-for-earth as another piece of machinery coming down the assembly line. I don't know exactly what is missing here, but I left feeling flat.
2 stars (out of 5)