Not as good as these reviews indicate...

Rating: 1/10 (16 August 2013)

Warning, SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!!
One illogically plotted moment after another, dumb dialog, single dimension characters and needlessly pornographic violence don't usually make for a good movie and, folks, Elysium is no exception. Like many always willing American male age-group-focused audience members with fifteen bucks to burn for a good Hollywood spectacle, I can usually deal with the latter three faults in my summer blockbusters, but perhaps unlike those imaginary people, when a screenwriter doesn't bother to craft a coherent plot, I tend to check out early and start analyzing what's wrong with the script. (Maybe I wasn't focus-grouped enough.)
And so I'm here on IMDb to share my thoughts.
Aren't you lucky?
Shall we?
Elysium, like many bad films, does not come up with compelling reasons to care about its characters.
What do I mean? Flash forward to the finale. This is the critical denouement between the protagonist, an ex-con played by Matt Damon and his love-interest, actress Alice Walker, a nurse who also seems to be Matt's ex-childhood friend. Matt has battled his way to the heart of Elysium, a giant Earth-orbiting space habitat whose residents enjoy near-magical healing technology. This, in order to save himself from cancer. Alice's daughter happens to also have cancer in need of Elysium's magic healing. Alice and her daughter are there too. Deep Breath: In this scene Matt has to zap his brain to transfer a special computer code to reset Elysium, so he, the daughter and all other non- residents who don't have a special members-only laser-tag branded on their forearms can have life-saving medical intervention via the futuristic healing machines only located on Elysium (yes, it's that convoluted...). Matt can't save himself, though: he will die as a result of the transfer having some kind of weird built-in brain booby-trap. Silliness of this plot aside, in a well-crafted story, we might buy in, and find satisfaction in Matt's sacrifice for the daughter. But in Elysium, this moment falls flat. It feels like an afterthought because there was not a relationship established earlier.
Flash back to first and second acts. To establish the bond between these characters we have a brief, somewhat romantic scene with kid Matt saying he'll take kid Alice to Elysian "some day". (This scene is rehashed sporadically throughout the film.) We have a shot of one of Matt's tattoos which recalls a moment from that one romantic scene. And we have Matt meeting Alice again as an adult and discovering that she's finally realized her long held dream of becoming a nurse. Here he mentions, meekly, that it might be great for the two to get back together again. In one other romance set-up scene, Matt is briefly surprised when he meets Alice's daughter while seeking shelter with Alice when he's on the run from evil Elysium agents. And that's it for relationship building.
What else happened with these two? What about the relationship after they were kids? What separated them? How about now? They don't kiss. They don't get back together. They don't seem to even like each other. Matt is focused solely on saving himself. What about the daughter? doesn't she have cancer, too? It's telling that Blomkamp can't physically connect Matt, Alice and the daughter in the final scene when we're asked to care about their relationship and experience Matt's sacrifice for them. Not much really connects them in the film, either. They say their goodbyes via walkie-talkie.
Rather than focus on a strong central plot (like, Matt must rescue his love interest's daughter from cancer) along with two, at most three, logically supporting subplots (like, Matt must destroy Elysium, restore love of the ex-girlfriend, save humanity...) the film sets up all its problems as equal: Matt Damon has cancer, he needs to go to Elysium; his ex-sweetheart's daughter has cancer, she needs to go to Elysium; all the people of Earth are sick, they need to go to Elysium. All the baddies must go down. Each conflict competes to be the central theme of the movie, and none win.
In a better film, Alice and Matt's relationship might be fully explored in the first act. Instead, every moment in Elysium we have seems like one of my nine year old son's "and then Dad, and then Dad, and then Dad" stories. The only thing missing are the Minecraft references.
To be sure, the central message of the movie is a good one: that we are all equally human and so deserve the same opportunity to have a good life, and good heath, wherever we may happen to live. It's particularly well-suited to our contemporary social landscape. But before I can care about this message, I need characters I can care about and a story that makes sense too.
To like this movie, you must believe that on Elysium there's technology that can cure any disease instantly, but that for some reason it can't be duplicated on Earth, not even partially, where fantastic technology also exists, just not quite that fantastic.
Blomkamp is an amazingly talented, visual virtuoso but, unfortunately, a garage band screenwriter. Please, Hollywood, hire this genius a good screenwriter.