Entertaining, but some Major Issues

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2013)

First off, all the talk about how Elysium promotes socialism is silly. This is what the world is really like - the wealthy hoarding everything (for context see the You Tube Wealth Inequality in America video) while most people don't even know how worse off they are. Obviously the movie shows a more extreme situation than most of us in the developed world live in, but it's not TOO far off the mark.
In general I found this movie to be pretty entertaining - I like the sci-fi effects and Matt Damon always delivers great acting. And while Sharlto Copley's character was just despicable, I love the actor after having watched District 9.
A few things stood out about this movie that rubbed me the wrong way:
1) Jodie Foster's accent & dialog was ridiculously irritating. I normally like her and don't understand what happened to her in this movie - she tried to maintain this snobby voice which was simply annoying. And she kept repeating certain lines e.g. "I want Homeland Defense to apprehend everyone on that ship!"
2) While the movie tried to show diversity in general across cultures (more so than most), it followed the usual Hollywood cliché - the HERO is a WHITE MAN, Matt Damon. Just about every character in the movie was Hispanic or one of color....except the main one, Matt Damon. Who of course goes on to save the whole world. Because only white guys every do that in Hollywood. Not those of color, and not women.
3) The ending. (SPOILER ALERT - DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING) Haven't we seen this SAME ENDING a gazillion times in movies lately? The hero sacrifices himself and dies so the viewer is supposed to get all emotional about it. Give me a break. At this point it would be more original for Hollywood to show an actual happy ending where the main characters survive. All I could think about when I saw this particular one was "didn't I see this already in Blood Diamond????" In the latter movie, Leo's character (a white male hero of course) dies while talking to his love interest on a cell phone and watching a "pretty view". In this one, Damon's character dies while doing the exact same thing. Talk about an overdone scene. ALSO - if Elysium is so advanced that they can make someone whose head was blown off by a grenade come back together - they can't use the same technology to bring Matt Damon to life who didn't have nearly as much damage done to his body? This brain-data-security-hack tool is THAT effective??
4) The long fight scenes made it feel like more of an action movie than anything else. This is just a personal thing, but I don't need to see fight scenes that are this long....this is also overdone in Hollywood.
5) Finally, I think the movie was hinting at wealth inequality messages etc. but didn't really delve into that and instead went for a typical Hollywood mindless action flick approach. I think it could have been deeper, and characters could have been developed more. Even the relationship between Max & Frey seemed to be forced for the sake of having a love plot in the movie.
I gave this movie a 6 because it did keep my interest as I watched, but overall the above issues really overshadowed what could have been a much better film.