A Wasted Effort

Rating: 5/10 (30 January 2014)

A great idea--wealthy humans have abandoned a demolished Earth for a luxury space station, leaving behind the poor and disenfranchised while controlling them from afar--is ignored in this run-of-the-mill sci-fi action flick. It should have a lot of provocative things going for it, what with its socially conscious topic, but the bulk of the film is consumed with lead Matt Damon getting from point A to point B, facing obstacles all the while. By focusing on the surfeit of action, so little is made of its original conceit that it feels like a wasted effort. There are absolutely no surprises in writer/director Neill Blomkamp's Hollywood-101 storytelling (there's even a race to save a little girl dying of leukemia) and no depth to any of the characters. Damon is given little to do while Jodie Foster plays the villain--this might have been fun to watch, if only to see her overact and play against type, but, like everything else that might have mattered, Blomkamp could care less.