A solid "save the world"

Rating: 6/10 (18 December 2013)

As in many Hollywood "save the world" sci-fi action movies, the hero dies just as he saves his loved ones, the new world is not for him. The sappy ending is in stark contrast to the director's penchant for blowing up bodies, faces, you name it, in slow bone and face-tearing sequences.
The premise is standard: a world divided into have-nots and haves, the latter secluded in a paradise. This ground was treaded more expertly in the Sean Connery vehicle Zardoz (and you cannot beat Beethoven's 7th as a sound track), but Elysium still does a solid job. Of course, a space station is an unlikely Elysium for the rich, what with all the transportation and supply problems, vulnerability and so forth. A subtropical island chain would have been more realistic, but the writer (who also directs) can be forgiven fully because Elysium is not needlessly blown to pieces at the end. It just makes a neater-looking destination than any old island.
I was worried for a bit after the bad would-be military dictator (played tight-lipped by Jodie Foster) died, and it looked like a typical cheap showdown between hero and the exoskeleton-powered hired hand of said dictator was going to be the finale. But then that one gets dispatched quickly also, and a more gentle but nefarious 'good bad guy' is up next. In fact, the way Foster's character dies is genius scriptwriting in hindsight: when she realizes that the new world order is not her style (with all those poor Spanish-speaking people living happily ever after), she stays a nurse's hand and rather bleeds to death instead.
The ending is sappy (compare that to the infamous 'aging' scene at the end of Zardoz), but the movie is well-intentioned, the action keeps coming in good doses, the characters are drawn just enough so one can slightly care for them. All in all not a bad way to waste an hour and fifty minutes.