Filled with clichés and a pretentious message

Rating: 6/10 (16 August 2013)

"Elysium" takes place in the year 2154. The wealthy live on an utopia ring-shaped space station where their is no poverty or sickness. This is Elysium. On earth, resides everyone else. One man, who has little time left, embarks on a journey that could create a bridge between both societies. Elysium after all is the place where to postpone mortality. Millions desire such an option. The concept is interesting but its delivery and undertones rub me the wrong way. Why? All the people who live on Elysium are Caucasians led by a power-hungry Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster). The majority of the people depicted on earth are poor, disheveled, crime-ridden Latinos, except of course for Matt Damon's character Max. Coincidence or planned by writer and director Neill Blomkamp, this seems to be a futuristic retelling of the US and Mexico immigration problem gone awry.
I am sure I'm not only person who notices this. "District 9", Blomkamp's 2009 breakthrough film is not so much different than "Elysium." Instead, of white people and Latinos, it was oppressed aliens and violent Africans. Either way, immigration gone wrong and the inhumanity towards different races is a common theme for Mr. Blomkamp's movies. It is a noble topic to explore, but it is delivered in a such a way that it feels demeaning and pretentious. The figures that run Elysium are depicted as caricature isolationists that are willing to kill in order to preserve their perfect society whereas all the poor suffering earthlings are all good people who have no choice but to result to thuggery in order to survive. The movie runs into the clichéd scenario of rich versus poor.
Even more clichéd are some of the later plot devices and characters. Jodie Foster plays the typical stuck up witch and Sharlton Copley as her crazy henchman revives the badass head mercenary from "District 9". Diego Luna plays Max's caring friend to the tee, and Wagner Mourna, the high-tech sidekick, is like a mastermind with too many television sets and too much red bull. As for Damon himself, he does fine. Playing a feeble anti-hero in the first half and then a heroic ass kicking fighter in the second half works to his advantage. After all, he played Jason Bourne right? The performances aren't all that bad, just not that memorable. I get the vibe that the actors were hired to have more fun with their roles rather than take them seriously.
What works for "Elysium" is the gritty raw visual style that Blomkamp has brought for us to the screen. Sure, the movie feels like the unofficial sequel to "District 9," but it is still fun. I can never get tired of exploding human bodies, cuts between jerky hand-held and cool slow-motion, or even trashed invested regions. The Visual Effects are another positive addition. When it came to the action scenes, the lines between CGI and animatronics for the robots became blurred. The VFX is that good. While I do not much care for the underlying tones for Neil Blomkamp's new movie, I cannot deny that I found it entertaining.