Good Sci-Fi, but too many fight scenes

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2013)

It's 2154. The Haves live on Elysium, a space station above earth. The Have-Nots live on a ravished, diseased and over-populated Earth below. Max (Matt Damon) who lives on Earth catches a fatal dose of radiation and is told by a robot he has 5-days to live and is given some pills for the pain. There is a plan to have Max go to Elysium for a cure and also to download security information so the people on Earth could go to and enjoy Elysium too. Right now the people on Earth are considered non-citizens and it is illegal for them to go to Elysium. Max's arm is imprinted with a counterfeit stamp to show he is a citizen of Elysium.
Webster's says Elysium is " a place or condition of ideal happiness."
Well, as you would expect, things go wrong and most of the movie shows fight scenes with Max trying to get to Elysium and then many fight scenes when he is on Elysium. Kruger (Sharlto Copley), a hit-man for Secretary Delecourt (Jodi Foster) relishes in shooting down shuttles from Earth that try to go to Elysium. Kruger concentrates on Max, who now has all the Elysium security info implanted in his head and because of that Kruger cannot kill Max because Delecourt needs that info to change the current Elysium government she considers too soft.
We don't get to know too much about any of the characters except for Max. We see Delacourt as a real Biaaatch who has no compassion for anyone. Robot builder John Carlyle (William Fichtner) needs long term contracts with Elysium and agrees to help Delacourt change things. And, not exactly a love interest, we see Frey (Alice Braga) a longtime childhood friend of Max and she has a child who has Leukemia and needs to go to Elysium for the cure. Frey and child complicate Max's mission.
In the beginning we see amazing beautiful sets of Elysium and later on we see more very good, but darkened sets, and this time as background for all the fight scenes that dominate the movie. There were just too many fight scenes when we needed to take a breath. We would have liked to have seen more of other characters and of Elysium as everything seemed perfect there. We like to see perfect things.
Was surprised to see William Fichtner look like a 25-yr old. There is that technology now to make people look younger than they are. I don't have a problem with that but I almost didn't recognize him at first. I think Jodi Foster looked quite young too. Kudos.
The acting all around is very good, but sometimes we had a hard time understanding Kruger's dialogues. That is, except when he went on a foul language tirade, then we understood him pretty good.
I can see you have a question regarding Matt Damon and the answer is yes, the Jason Bourne character does come out of him but in this movie it takes more time to get the job done. (7/10)
Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes.