Well, at least it looks gorgeous...

Rating: 6/10 (24 January 2014)

Sadly, the writing is just horrible. Not mediocre. Not acceptable. Not even bad. Just horrible.
OK, let's start with the good stuff. As I already said, the movie is visually stunning. The production designers knew what they were doing, that is for sure. The visual effects are very nice and the action scenes are poetry of blood and gore. The acting, given the script, is actually perfect.
But that is it. The bad stuff is just... I don, know, bad? Sorry. As I said, the movie is just awfully written. The first problem is the overly serious tone. I am sorry, one of the reasons 'District 9' worked so well despite sharing some of 'Elysium's faults was the humor. Yes, it lacked subtlety, it had some plot holes... But it was a satire, and a good one. 'Elysium, however, plays it deadly serious. And while I don't mind seriousness in my movies, I find it very hard to forgive some writing flaws when it seems that the writer thought they wrote the best sci-fi script ever. I will write a few spoilers here. Be warned.
OK, first, I don't really like the "haves vs have-nots" conflict for some reason. I guess it is because every time I see it in a movie or a book it is so incredibly polarized it looks ridiculous. 'Elysium' is not an exception. Anybody who has more money than the main character (and the main character is literally dirt poor) is plain evil, no matter if we are talking about his employers or the actual people in Elysium. If you are not dirt poor, you are an evil oppressor. End of story. 1%-ers are evil. It is incredibly one-sided. What is ironic is the fact that Neil Blomkamp, the creator of this movie, is a 1%-er himself, being the most famous South-African director right now. The polarization is shown even visually - 1%-ers are sterile clean, the poor people living on Earth look like they haven't taken a shower in their lives... And... Well, sorry but, while I am not a 1%-er myself, I understand why they treated the "have-nots" like they did. Again, I am sorry but you don't need money to launder your clothes and to take a shower. Being poor does not equal being dirty. The people from Elysium looked superior - and were superior - simply because they knew how to use soap.
Then come the real problems. OK, Matt Damon's character is oppressed. We got it. He is oppressed by the evil ones and they oppress him. But... There are moments when you just tell your boss to go F himself - like when he cuts half of your daily wage because you have come to work with a broken hand and then he sends you to do a job that you both know is definitely going to kill you and there is no other way. You may need the job but you need your life more. You may be willing to take some humiliation but you wouldn't kill yourself for a sh!tty job. And yes, that is exactly what Damon's character did.
Then... OK, there is this machine that can heal all diseases instantly. No, there isn't just one machine, from what we are shown the amount of these machines is infinite. Literally. We are shown not only that there is such machine in every single house on Elysium (and most houses on Elysium are just empty since nobody lives in them) but also that infinite amount of these machines can be sent to Earth with a simple voice command and nobody will lose anything. And, I am sorry, but this just doesn't make sense at all. We are shown that all resources on Elysium come from Earth - and from people on Earth. One would think that people on Elysium would value their resources enough to send some of these machines on Earth - may be not in every house but at least in the hospitals. Especially since sending them anywhere is, as shown in the movie, completely free. They have infinite amount of machines that can resurrect a man from the dead and yet they let millions of people die just because. Sorry. I know Blomkamp wanted to show how heartless the 1%-ers were but this is not heartless. This is dumb. It is a waste of valuable resources - it is like letting your food rot because you are too lazy to put it in the fridge. We are even shown that people from Earth are attacking Elysium and destroying the ridiculously expensive houses there just to get those machines - you see, by not allowing them to use the machines the 1%-ers are actually losing their precious homes. Ironically, had Blomkamp chosen a more satyric approach this would actually make some sense. Had he chosen to make the conflict less polarized this problem could be avoided. Had he chosen some different plot device instead of the all-healing machines half of the movie's problems wouldn't exist.
Alas, he made it this way. It is still watchable. Even if he wrote it horribly, he directed it well. But it could be so much better. I hope he won't make the same mistakes again.