FILM REVIEW: Elysium

Four years after his debut feature District 9 thrilled audiences with its dystopian view of a future Johannesburg and put him and leading man Sharlto Copley firmly on the Hollywood map, South African-born director Neill Blomkamp returns with another, bigger, equally jaded vision of the future.

Elysium

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, William Fichtner, Wagner Moura

In 2154 the world is inhabited by two classes of people, the have-nots, who scrounge out an existence in the slums of Los Angeles on Earth, and the haves, who live on a space station orbiting the globe called Elysium. Heaven is a place off Earth full of palatial mansions, well-trimmed lawns and machines that can cure any disease. It's all very Diepsloot versus Dainfern.

On Earth the poor dream of making it to the luxurious heights of Elysium but few can afford the ticket. Those who are desperate enough to try to illicitly make their way to the station are shot down by representatives of the austere figure Delacourt (Foster), Elysium's minister of defence, who protects the haves and their paradise with steely, ruthless determination.

Our hero Max (Damon) is a reformed criminal working in a robot factory on Earth. He is determined to save enough money to get to the place he's dreamed of since childhood. When a deadly radiation accident gives him only days to live, he must fast-track his trip by whatever means necessary.

The biggest obstacle in his way is a renegade Elysium agent named Kruger (Copley) who, together with a team of mercenary South Africans, is tasked with stopping him.

Blomkamp's vision of LA is as a sprawling slum where Spanish is the main language and everyone is governed by the will of Elysium. Its robot enforcers play convincingly to the social concerns of present-day America and its fears of being swallowed by immigrants.

Damon holds things together as the initially selfish, later selfless saviour of the planet, and Copley enjoys himself immensely as a twisted reincarnation of a border war reccie, replete with an exaggerated accent and Afrikaans slang.

Foster, who switches between perfect French at home and a Tilda Swinton impression at work, is as stiff as the robots she controls.

While there's a certain adeptness in the handling of the action, there are just too many scenes of spaceships crashing into Beverly Hills mansions and wreaking havoc to keep us interested in the potentially engaging social commentary glimpsed in the film's opening passages.

By the time the 99% get their revenge on the 1%, it's a pyrrhic victory that plays as a convenient coda to an otherwise disappointingly predictable, big budget, dystopian tale.

WHAT OTHERS SAY

IT'S IMPRESSIVELY designed by Philip Ivey, who worked on 'District 9' and 'The Lord of the Rings', but depressingly predictable in its ideas and tedious in its boneheaded brutality. - Philip French, The Guardian

Quickly degenerates into a long flurry of running, shooting and blowing up things. - Laurence Phelan, The Independent

Vivid visuals and a pointedly political context are let down by conceptual limitations. - Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter