Another disappointment from Neill Blomkamp

Rating: 3/10 (24 August 2013)

South African director Neill Blomkamp was discovered by New Zealand director Peter Jackson a few years ago, and he so believed in this director that he produced his first big movie, District 9. Having been a fan of Peter Jackson since well before his step up to the big league, through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was optimistic about District 9; if Peter Jackson believed in it, it had to have some promise. That's what I thought, anyway. Ultimately I was severely disappointed by District 9, which in boring documentary style explored the treatment of aliens in South Africa, seen through the eyes of a character no one cared about, watching characters we didn't know enough about to care. The underlying message; this is how rich people treat the poorest of the poor. The message is a good one, the execution extremely poor.
Fast forward to 2013, and we have his second big film at the theaters. Without Peter Jackson as a producer this time, but instead he has attracted big stars like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster to the film. Matt Damon playing Max; a poor, unfortunate orphan on earth, struggling in a low pay, high risk job, hoping to save up enough money one day to take him and his childhood girlfriend to the haven in the sky; the off-world, man built colony called Elysium, where only the rich and beautiful are allowed to live. An accident at work gives him only 5 days to carry out his dream, and to be saved by the health beds on Elysium, which can cure any illness in seconds, without any side effects what so ever. To assist him he gets a group of rebels who on a semi-regular basis sends their own spaceships up to Elysium with fugitives who've saved up enough money for the ticket. On Elysium, chief of security Delacourt (Jodie Foster) does everything in her power - and more - to prevent them from landing.
Once again it seems that Blomkamp is more interested in conveying a message than actually delivering a good, coherent sci-fi/action epic. The message this time; the rich consider themselves elevated over the poor, and do not want anything to do with them. While this certainly rings true in today's society, no one watching a movie presented as a big star sci-fi/action epic really cares. So, as far as conveying a message goes, Blomkamp once again fails. Unfortunately his failure also extends to his ability to convey a good action movie.
The characters aren't fleshed out enough for the audience to really care. Jodie Foster is a great actress, but she seems badly miscast in the role of rogue security officer, planning to overtake the presidency. It's sad to see her struggling her way through this movie, in what is probably the worst performance I've ever seen her give. South African actor Sharlto Copley, who also got a slight break with District 9, is certainly the most entertaining of the characters, but the movie fails hugely in his credibility - we lack the background information to make his place in the movie believable. Matt Damon plays pretty much on auto pilot, and that works well enough to get him through the movie. His character Max and his girlfriend Frey are given some background information through some scenes from their childhood - scenes that are repeated annoyingly many times as a reminder of what we've already seen. Yet when it comes to their adult versions, we are given no background between then and now at all, ultimately failing even there to make the characters fleshed out enough to be believable.
To top it off, every action sequence in the movie are filmed using a fast paced camera following the action. The problem with that is that the 24 pictures per second that film is able to convey is not enough to make the motion fluid. In other words, all action sequences are shaky and blurry, making it hard to follow what's actually happening. At the end of the movie I also had a bit of a headache, which I didn't at the beginning. I don't know why this type of action filming has become so popular, because I can't remember ever hearing of anyone actually preferring this type of filming over more steady and fluent presentations of the action on screen. But when it comes to effects it might be cheaper to present them in a blurry way, than having to flesh out all the details in proper action sequences...
The movie's vision of the future is an interesting one, though, and the presentation of 2154's Earth isn't really too far fetched as of now. However the presentation of Elysium leaves far more questions than answers, and does not seem credible at all.
At the end of the day I sat through a movie with a disappointingly simple story, with disappointing and non-credible characters, and with an ever more disappointing ending yielding even more questions than answers. Blomkamp shows once again that his ability to create entertaining sci-fi/action movies is non-existent. Does he have a message in his movie? Who cares? If he wanted to really address the problems of society of today he should do it through proper documentaries, or even contemporary big star action movies with the message up front and clear, instead of what he does now, which is failing at entertaining and failing at conveying messages. So for those who've read through this review and not seen the movie; don't bother with it.