The film that didn't have an ending.

Rating: 6/10 (5 February 2014)

I saw the trailer for this, and I was really geared up for watching the film. Interesting though unoriginal story, dazzling dystopian and utopian views and a stellar cast. Unfortunately though, the film was let down by an all-over-the-place plot and a terrible ending (if that is what it can be called). I can't explain my frustration behind the ending without spoiling it, so read no further if you don't want to be spoiled.
The first issue that caught my attention was that I could see absolutely no way how the film could be resolved satisfactorily, and part of the reason why I wanted to see Elysium was because I wanted to see how things panned out in the end. Just breaking into Elysium and cutting the rich people down to size is far from a satisfactory ending.
It gives me absolutely no pleasure to say that I was right. The concept of the film was just complete nonsense and a complete oxymoron. Matt Damon runs around gormlessly for the second half of the film because even he knows that what he's doing doesn't make sense. HUGE SPOILER INCOMING. So he goes off on a one-way trip to Elysium to sacrifice his life so everybody on Earth can get citizenship to Elysium. What? What? So, what, these idiot directors believe that we're actually going to just absent-mindedly think "Everyone on Earth gets free healthcare, citizenship and access to Elysium, happy ending! Yay!" The whole concept of the film was just flawed from the start. Here are the main issues, unaddressed and unsolvable:
1.) So everyone gets to join the party now? How do these moron protagonists expect the whole population of Earth is going to get a ticket to Elysium and how would they even accommodate them all? It's as if there were no other people on Earth apart from those in Los Angeles. What about all the other of billions of people?!
2.) Who decides who gets the life-saving healthcare and resources first on Earth? How do they decide? Won't it create conflict? Even Elysium couldn't account for probably around ten billion deprived people all making the same demands at once. How will they re-build and prioritise the infrastructure of Earth? Again, who decides? This is another significant problem.
3.) If the researchers looked into population demographics, population momentum ensures that although better quality of life that is handed to the people of Earth from the revolutionary cancer-curing healthcare of Elysium comes with a lower birth rate. The population would continue to rise at a staggering rate, continue to explode as the planet continues to implode from squalor, overexploitation, in-fighting and population strain. Which was why the rich decided to segregate themselves from the rest of the planet in the first place.
So actually, Matt Damon achieves nothing. In fact, he probably creates more problems than they started with.
If you thought the film 300 was amazing: 300 Spartans taking with them over 10,000 Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae, you'll absolutely love this. Perhaps 6-7 men (and they were a rabble at that) and one rogue overthrew millions in the absolute fiasco that was the Battle of Elysium. I'm sick of this trash. Where were the robot guards? We saw a few when the ship landed, they got shot and that was it. Elysium's defences were non-existent. I'm sure only a dozen would have been enough to mop them all up.
Otherwise, the film was decent. The plot with Delacourt attempting to take over Elysium was clever and interesting (although it would have been nice to see what the citizens of Elysium thought about the whole Earth affair), and as that was reaching its climax, even that was cut abruptly and unceremoniously short. It seemed a habit. Whether it be a character, a plot line or an idea, everyone was quickly driven off a cliff and never mentioned again.
Major gripes over, otherwise Elysium was interesting (though flawed) conceptually, and there was some great set pieces and brilliant acting. It was heart-breaking at times, and others had us crying with laughter (robots are not empathetic when telling a person they have radiation sickness and are going to die within days). If they had stuck with the plot lines they had and added 15 minutes on the ending to resolve everything, it would have been an outstanding film.