Don't listen to all the bad hype, this film is quite worth watching

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2013)

Elysium is about a socioeconomic situation in the year 2154 (Babylon 5 anyone?) that puts all the rich "nobility" in a station orbiting the Earth that has everything, and the rest of humankind is left struggling with the scraps on Earth. The protagonist is an ex-con working in a droid-assembly factory who gets lethally irradiated and decides to go to a black marketeer who agrees to give him passage to Elysium in exchange for all the information contained in a billionaire's brain (because USB sticks are too insecure apparently).
Now, the sides shown in this plot are not what'd you call grey, with the exception of Spider (the black marketeer) who is portrayed as just a greedy criminal in the beginning but it's shown that he actually cares for people as the film goes on. The rich are pure evil, keeping every scrap of resources for themselves, hosting garden parties while not caring for the people left behind on Earth, while the poor are good people struggling by or forced to crime. Understandably, this is not enough for some film-lovers nowadays, but in my personal opinion, it ties great to the film, because it's an over-exaggerated metaphor of human society from the medieval ages till today. It portrays what's the worse that humanity can do with the social and economic ideologies it uses today, the rich get fatter and the poor can't even find a piece of string in their pockets. One could say that the leaders of Elysium are evil and greedy beyond logic (e.g. they keep heal-everything equipment in every house and they have a surplus stored in hundreds of ship, while people on Earth are left to deal with disease and injury the old fashioned ways), but really, take a look at today's society and tell me that if laws didn't exist to make everyone equal, we wouldn't be having the same situation. Just look at how Walmart treats its customer and then you can go bashing the film. Well, Elysium is a universe where such laws are not in place.
The acting is excellent, and the CGI need to be commended. There's plenty of action for those who like it, but plot and character development doesn't lag behind. The hero is a strong suite in Elysium. Max is not the kind of hero who tries to do what's right because it's right. He is an antihero of sorts, because he does what he does for his own self-interest. He's not greedy or anything, he's just looking for the best way to survive. It's a quite realistic depiction for a character, one that you don't see very often, and *SPOILER* only towards the end, where he realizes that he can't do anything to save himself, he becomes selfless and decides to sacrifice himself for the good of others *END SPOILER*.
If you've seen District 9, then you'll recognize the equivalent story. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something that bothered me a little, although I can see how it would be hard to write a very different story, considering that the film wants to touch certain issues. If you think about it, it's a re-imagination of District 9, where the aliens are replaced by humans, and the humans are replaced by rich humans.
The ending is awesome, and I'll leave it at that. For me the ending cleared up any shortcomings I could see, and I'll be honest, there wasn't a lot. I wished there was a bigger ending sequence however, maybe extended by a couple minutes, but hey, you can't have everything.
Conclusion: A solid film - 8/10 - Just off from being blown away.