Elysium

Rating: 5/10 (27 August 2013)

Elysium wasn't particularly a movie that I wanted to see, but within the first while of the movie I thought it showed incredible promise. The premise and dealing with a subject that is very much a subject of discussion and debate today, the whole health care system, both in the United States and probably other parts of the world, is shown here in this story in what I perceived to be an imaginative and unique way of doing so. I was expecting the film to give me some food for thought and to give me something to think about and shed some light on what is a very controversial issue with a lot of people. While the film started strong and the premise looked like one that would deliver a satisfying, yet thought provoking film, was then thrown into the recycling bin and what we were left with was a gory, loud and unrealistic film full of lots of unbelievable action scenes, chases, explosions and good guy after bad guy more or less. The further Elysium, went on the more bored with it I got, and I checked my watch several times to see when it would eventually be over because once the action and the special effects started to take over and any shred of a story this film once had was totally gone, then I just stopped caring about the characters in the film, and the movie itself and I just wanted it to end. I just found that these long overblown action scenes were nothing new and just a display of special effects and action techniques that were neither interesting, or anything new to marvel at. I was a bit surprised by the end product, as I liked writer/director Neill Blomkamp's previous feature District 9, quite a bit. That was a film that was unique and with a good story that gave you a lot of food for thought and things to think about, but they also made it captivating and you cared for the characters and it was entertaining too. That is why I thought the first little bit of Elysium, showed such promise and I was hoping in a lot of ways that this would show and have a lot of the good merits of District 9, but they seem to have all been abandoned for action, explosions and blood and guts. The last half was almost a little too over the top in almost every was as well and some of it felt laughably bad. It's too bad this film didn't work because you had a very talented cast and crew who worked on it, but it seems all their efforts did not pay off. I think if Blomkamp had developed his screenplay better and abandoned all the action for a solid script that really had something interesting to say about the health care debate, but still have included the science fiction aspects and gave us something to reflect upon, then this could have been a great film. It just felt like Blomkamp got a bit lazy and instead of dazzling us with a great script, he chose to go the other way and supplemented the rest of the film with long, overblown and dumb action scenes. Elysium, was one of those films that I disliked so much, that I felt I had wasted not only my money, but my time as well by watching it. I hope that Blomkamp takes these words to heart and makes his next feature a lot more carefully because I really liked District 9 and this film showed some promise in the beginning, but overall did not work. I hope Blomkamp can make a good third film and I am confident that he will not just be a one hit wonder filmmaker with District 9, but he really has to apply himself for his third feature and overall abandon all the cheesy action for a good script, a task he is capable of and one I hope he achieves for his next feature.