A Technological Mish Mash Mess.

Rating: 3/10 (13 August 2013)

Just got back from the flicks, It's Monday night weekend after the premier. Elysium is a dramatic outlook on how things in our reality could end up. This is the story of a civilization that has actually separated the 1% rich people living in a Kubrickesque space station while the other 99% poor and disease ridden people still live on the planet and doing what they can to survive. Life on earth actually doesn't look that much different from our own reality just on a larger scale. The population on planet Earth would do anything to get a one way ticket to Elysium so that they could cure themselves of all their impurities with healing beds which is a device you lay on and completely heals every faulty molecule in their bodies.
Matt Damon plays Max who at times seems kind of weak and dismal, portrayed as a beat down factory worker slaving away in a factory that produces robots for the rich,He also has a criminal past but now is trying live a straight miserable life instead of a miserable criminal life. All the while thinking of his boyhood fantasy, which was whisking away his girlfriend up to the space station Elysium.
An accident at work leaves him with only 5 days to live. Of course here comes the old story of a small group of men taking on the 1% rich elite.
Jodie Foster who I love and have always enjoyed watching plays a cold hearted conniving woman who is in charge of the security of Elysium. It's kind of nice to see her in a different role as a villain. But, her character Delacourt becomes highly annoying the more she is on screen. Aside from her terrible fake accent, which I think was supposed to sound British or something your guess is as good as mine. Delacourt turns against the President of the Station when he undermines her authority when she goes trigger happy and orders one of her rogue agents on Earth to kill 47 people that tried to land on a station after they stole fake ID's that get branded on there skin so that the station will recognize them as a citizen. Delacourt(Foster) feels that these people are threatening the very fabric of the stations population.
I'm not adding all the storyline details to this review that would take way too long to point out all the faults on why this film doesn't work well. So read on for the short version.......
Matt Damon and Jodie Foster seemed very detached from their characters, I don't know if it was the directing or not. The film seemed rushed in most parts even though it had a fairly lengthy runtime of 1hr 49mins. The technology in the film also doesn't match up. The station has the ability to have biobeds which can heal any disease in human history but they still have to use key cards to move from room to room in high security areas. The space station itself looks just like something from 2001 A Space Odyssey, except it has an artificial atmosphere made by plant life and trees. The fight scenes were of course filmed in seizure cam mode(If you don't know what that is, it's short for nauseating and annoying). Jodi Foster's role is pretty much pointless in the end. Max and his cohorts eventually land on Elysium to set things straight. Max's computer hacking friend in one scene has to decode a bunch of secure doors with a pin reader laptop that looks like it's more from 1990's than 200 years from now, all to gain access to the mainframe eventually rebooting the station so that it accepts all citizens as equal not just the rich elite.
The more I think about this film the more I hate it. The visuals are stunning, the sound is amazing, but the storyline is old and rotten like a song being put on repeat. The film seems out of place and cliché most of the time. The villains in the film are boring and not worth mentioning except for the fact that they stole the main villain from Mad Max.
I don't understand how they have the ability to heal everyone but still use computers with keyboards and doors with key cards. Most of the technology is not explained it's just thrown abruptly on the screen, and never gives us any explanation. As far as I'm concerned by the time we figure out how to molecularly heal our bodies of all diseases we will all be past this pathetic storyline of monetary gain and greed. The story is dumb and a waste of time, I expect this form of acting from Matt Damon, but not from Jodie Foster, she should of turn this role down. Also we have all seen Matt Damon in this type of gun wielding role way too many times to even give a crap.
The two sides of the coin good and bad are certainly operating on two different frequencies and never truly are in tune with one another. This film had a lot of potential but spirals out of control, due to lack of character substance, and integrity. The film looses it's cohesion after the first half hour.
Don't waste your time.