ELYSIUM: A FILM REVIEW

There has been lots of talk about the recent Matt Damon film, Elysium, most of it wildly off the mark. Some of  the people have said it is propaganda for the liberal left. Others have said it is a call to let all Mexicans into this country. Ultimately it is about the have and have nots, a scenario this movie is getting right.

The year is 2154 and the world is an overcrowded cess pool, full of pollution, disease and way too many people. While humanity suffers a dismal existence, the 1% live aboard the space station Elysium, where there is no poverty, disease or even old age. Matt Damon plays Max, a ex-con trying to go straight working in a robot factory that seems very Dickensian and not far off from what workers are treated like today. Robot cops harass the public, even beating them for no apparent reason, which is JUST like today.

Max meets up with an old friend from his childhood Frey (Alice Braga) while being stitched up at the local hospital and again after being hit with a lethal dose of radiation from a misstep at the robot factory. He learns she has a daughter dying from cancer and only Elysium can save her. In order to save himself and the little girl, Max agrees to break into the space station in order to not only look for a cure, but to save humanity as well.

Jodie Foster is Delacourt, the head of security for the station and out for more power versus the elected President. She conspires with rouge agent Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to create a coop, but Max accidentally downloads the program into his bonded metal suit and now everyone wants him dead. Chaos ensues.

The movie as a whole is not as good as the director's last, District 9, but is still a rousing story with great special effects. The robots look very real and original and the landscapes are beautiful to witness. The story could have used a little more work and Jodie Foster was, I can't believe I am going to use these words, terrible in this film. Her accent is ALL over the place. Supposedly she was French but that was the one accent I never heard. She was American one minute, then British, then German and then back to American again. It was really offputting.

As for the detractors, most of them missed the point. My favorite was people saying it was an allegory about illegal immigration and we should let people across the border willy nilly. That is NOT what this film was about. Yes, everyone spoke Spanish, but as it took place in LA a hundred a fifty years in the future, wouldn't almost everyone there actually speak Spanish by then? And it's not like America is the paradise that Elysium is. Besides, illegal immigration has all but halted as there is better work in Mexico than here now. Talk about fighting the last war. I love how Republicans will harp on things that are from a previous era and have no bearing on today's problems. It is like they are stuck in a time loop, endless debating the same failed principles over and over again.

This movie was about several real issues. If the rich and powerful can stop aging and disease what are the chances of them sharing the info with the rest of us? Unlikely. And as long as we have idiots out there preaching against birth control and abortion while having a zillion kids, we are going to wind up much like this movie predicts. There are too many people on the planet already. If we don't do something about it, nature will do it for us.

The rich now live in gated communities. But what if the world continues to be poisoned and overcrowded? It's not a stretch to suggest that they move off world with their confiscated wealth and leave the rest of us here to fend for ourselves. That future is not far off. If you want to end like this film, do nothing.

Overall, this is a solid film well worth seeing.

3 and 1/2 stars out of five.