A great second effort but could have been much better

Rating: 8/10 (9 August 2013)

After his refreshing debut, "District 9", it was only a matter of time before Neill Blomkamp helmed another great story. "Elysium" is original and well-crafted. Keep it up young auteur. Now some highly-needed criticisms:
1) Lose that {uckin shaky camera business! It jars the audience from the excellent world which you have obviously laboriously created. If a member of your audience somehow is crazy enough to feel inclined to have the screen shake, let him bob his own head askance, in juxtaposition to that canvas on which the story unfolds. The rest of us can peacefully enjoy the visual feast without any distractions. Why all these modern directors feel they must shake their cameras so kinetically is beyond me. It probably illustrates how humans are merely good at being copycats even when what they are copying has no merit at all. I call it the 'silly but mammoth momentum of societal-pressure'.
2) Consider an alternative means of confrontation besides the perennial 'ear-roaring fight or car chase' between your protagonist and antagonist in the final act. It seems like most of these Hollywood movies are being made to some formula: no matter the story, the final act must have that 'ear-roaring fight or car chase'. It is so boring! Not to mention so foolish! Here is an idea: make it more realistic and have your protagonist use his brains to outwit his foe. In real life, if his existence were really that threatened, that is what he would invariably do. For unlike a video game, you do not get a second life in real life after you have been killed. Naturally, this has the sensible effect of making all humans hesitant, careful and conservative about engaging their foes. So make it realistic, or barring that, at least plausible, by having the protagonist outwit using more of his brains than attempting to subdue with mere brawn. And do so without breaking the cardinal rule of story-telling. For the cardinal rule of story- telling is, "tell the story with such verisimilitude and such steadiness of hand that your audience is completely immersed; no longer are they then just listening to a story but rather living those chain of events themselves." We are story- telling creatures whom themselves are constituted of stories after all. Remember that!
3) Focus more on your characters, their motivations, etc. In other words, more characterizations, and dramatizations and less, 'let's just pile on the action!'. It is the well-presented character that would organically lead to 'action' if his or her situation demands it. And let the camera linger, dammit! The audience is a voyeur. Or have you forgotten that one too?
For an example of how a master director after creating a world, is comfortable enough with his craft to let the camera slowly linger in it, all the more to immerse his audience, even as the plot builds and heightens to 'action', check out "Sanjuro" directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1962.