Matt Damon - the working class hero

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2014)

In the future evil people will wear suits and not want to live in slums. Therefore they construct an almighty space station called 'Elysium' to orbit the earth which is protected by robots who can shoot as straight as the Stormtroopers from Star Wars. Unfortunately, anyone who can't afford to live up there feels aggrieved and is therefore constantly trying to get up there in shuttles (to live for free at someone else's expense presumably?).
Enter our white Latino hero (?), Matt Damon, who is a hard working and virtuous pauper on Earth, who falls victim to an evil suit-wearing man's cruelty and only have five days to live. So he must find a way of getting up to Elysium to get the urgent medical treatment he needs.
So, he and his friends basically set out to steal, kill and blow up any evil person in a suit who stands in their way. Jodie Foster is the most evil person in a suit who is so evil she believes that Elysium should be inhabited by people who can afford to be there, instead of anyone who simply wants to go and live there for free. Therefore, she sends her top hit-man Sharlto Copley (by far the film's best part) to hunt him down. And, while Copley is the best part -amazingly - Jodie Foster is the worst. For a great actress, she doesn't really shine. She delivers all her lines like she's reading them in the most clichéd way possible. If this film was made in a single day then it would definitely be Jodie Foster's 'one bad day.' However, Elysium does look good. It's written and directed by Neill Blomcamp (of District 9 fame) and could almost be a companion piece to it. It has a great 'future-industrial' feel to it.
What lets this film down is its total in-your-face political message that 'all poor people are virtuous, hard-working and there simply to be exploited by the rich' while anyone who has earned their money (and wears a suit) is evil. In every second to Elysium the story rams this message down your throat, showing how whatever violent means the poor take, it's justified because they're poor. Yes, the film looks nice and Sharlto Copley is great (as ever), the whole thing seems a little too preachy to be taken as seriously as it tries to be.
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