It's too bad Blomkamp didn't make the screenplay as strong as a droid

Rating: 5/10 (20 January 2014)

Elysium is billed as a group of the earth's population overcoming a futuristic version of the caste system where the main characters on the low end of the totem pole attempt to stick it to the man. It is more than that but not much more. Max (Matt Damon) is a factory worker who works for a defense company that develops the very machines and droids that keep him and all of his peers under the thumb of the rich who live on a Halo-like contained space station which is called "Elysium." In a nutshell, Max is given a few days to live but would be fine if he was on Elysium as they have the technology to be able to heal him. This is the motivation needed to want to infiltrate Elysium. After speaking to a former "employer" who would like to steal from one of the rich on Elysium, Max is given a suit and told "we hook this into your nervous system and it'll make you strong as a droid." The movie progresses from this point. The visual effects are incredible. Neill Blomkamp does an incredible job directing films with a large amount of visual effects. He does a great job of using motion blur and shaky cameras to keep everything looking real and puts you into the action.
There are plenty of things that keep Elysium from being a great movie. The biggest problem with this movie is the character Kruger (Sharlto Copley). The character is a bit too goofy and Copley is okay but it almost seems as if Blomkamp gave him this part because of a friendship they have. I could see a number of actors that would have been better in this role and might have made the role a little less goofy. Copley is better in this role than the one he played in District 9 but not much better. He is an okay actor but probably needs to become a bit more polished before taking on another large role like this one or the one in District 9. Copley reacts to some events in a way that doesn't seem to make much sense to me and he doesn't seem as sinister as Blomkamp might have wanted that character to be. There were also some parts of Elysium that seemed to be too silly. The fact is that this is a movie about futuristic events so take that for what it is and just enjoy the movie because if you try to pick apart certain details it will just drive you crazy.
As mentioned, the visual effects were incredible. Elysium, the space station hovering around the earth, looked incredible. The droids were awesome. Everything looked about as real as it could get using the amount of visual effects Blomkamp did. Elysium was an okay movie because the writing and some of the acting was a bit weak. For example, I like William Fichtner quite a bit but I felt like his performance wasn't quite where I'm use to. Blomkamp might not get as much out of actors as he should as a director and I assume that has something to do with his desire to make everything look perfect. I was excited for this movie but unfortunately it let me down.