A futuristic allegory for the Occupy generation

Rating: 7/10 (17 January 2014)

In the year 2154, the earth has become a veritable wasteland of poverty, pollution and overpopulation (what a surprise). The wealthy elite have long since fled to a paradisiacal spaceship named Elysium (after the section in the Greek underworld reserved exclusively for heroes and poets) permanently orbiting the planet, where they lead lives of pampered ease, leaving the great unwashed masses back home to fend for themselves. Some of those masses make occasional desperate stabs at reaching the ship, where they are captured and put into camps, if they're lucky, or blown to smithereens before being able to land if they're not. Matt Damon plays a Joe Blow schmuck who, after receiving a fatal dose of radiation on the job, agrees to get in with a pretty bad crowd in order to get to Elysium to get a cure (the wealthy have all the medicines while the poor are left on Earth to sicken and die).
A post-apocalyptic tale for the Occupy generation, this allegory of class division and illegal immigration is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, the South African writer/director who gave us the surprise critical and commercial hit "District 9" in 2009.
Unfortunately, in a number of respects, "Elysium" doesn't quite rise to the level of that earlier film. Damon's Max de Costa is such a dull Everyman character that he goes from relatable to boring in no time flat. And the story, though promising at first, quickly stalls out, as Max spends an inordinate amount of the movie's running time just trying to get up to Elysium - though, once he gets there, things do pick up considerably.
Purse-lipped Jodi Foster hams it up as the cold-blooded defense secretary whose job it is to make sure that nothing or no one threatens the idyllic life in Elysium - a woman so evil and callous she makes Cruella Deville and the Wicked Witch of the West look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Shortcomings aside, however, "Elysium" uses first-rate art direction and production design to create a compelling vision of the future. Its sociopolitical subtext also lends it a gravitas that the story itself could never have achieved on its own. Add to that a genuinely touching ending and you have a movie that fails to fulfill the promise laid out by "District 9" but which has virtues of its own to recommend it.