Elysium: The Heaviest Handed Message

Neill Blomkamp is best known for District 9, a well received film with a none too subtle message about racism and the racial segregation of Apartheid... With Elysium, the message about healthcare and illegal immigration is less subtle than repeated punches to the groin...

Rich people live on the space station called Elysium where they have magical medical bays that can seemingly heal any injury short of death. Whereas - at least from what we see - Earth is grim and gritty. There's actually very little to say about the plot... because it's so generic and unimaginative.

Matt Damon is... well, Matt Damon. He's a small time crook, working a lousy job... he gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation (no superpowers?!) and is told he has four days to live but obviously, if he gets to Elysium their magical medical bays can save him... so, he decides to do a job.

Fortunately for Matt, he chooses the guy that runs his lousy factory who is on Earth, which is apparently the best place to do coding... as he is the guy who coded Elysium and all it takes to change who the president of Elysium is putting back factory settings... The funny thing is, we see that this data is encrypted and LETHALLY protected. When does that become relevant? The end of the film. Everyone is able to tell what the data is though...

Oh and despite having a lethal dose of radiation sickness, Matt Damon is running around fine... The kind of radiation exposure he had should mean he's pretty much incapacitated in a matter of hours, regardless of what futuristic pain meds he's on... Anyway, the one last heist goes wrong because Jodie Foster needs the factory reset that is now in Matt Damon's brain... so, he's pursued and eventually turns himself in because his girlfriend and her daughter get captured.

Then he's taken to Elysium where he predictably escapes, fights a bit and then dies allowing everyone to become a citizen of Elysium... at which point it becomes apparent that Elysium has giant shuttles with HUNDREDS OF MAGICAL MEDICAL BAYS IN THEM.

Why are the greedy bastards hogging them all for themselves then?

For that matter, if people flying onto the station illegally are such an issue - why is it open plan? It's all rather silly and EXTREMELY heavy handed.

One thing the Bourne franchise could do with is an epilepsy warning. The number of scenes where things occur in the blink of an eye or where the camera angle changes dozens of times in the blink of an eye are too numerous to count.

This is however, no deviation from the previous two films. As with the second film, this doesn't really deviate from the original formula... actually, if anything this more similar to the second film as the eponymous protagonist actually has a clue what is going on.

The notable thing about Bourne films is that people seem to think that they're all rather complex in their plots. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's no shocking revelations for anyone but the dullest film goer - he was part of a covert project to make a bunch of ass kicking assassins, it's merely a premise not part of the plot... the plot of these films is... MATT DAMON! Doing a lot of running around, shooting and sneaky spy stuff. All other points are of only minor importance - they aren't movies about characters or complex plots, they're about slick set pieces and big explosions.

The frenetic pace is present and we move from one city to the next to the next, sometimes with such rapidity it can be easy to miss the change. Not that it really seems to matter. It's best to describe this as a man who thinks he is a thinking man man's action film. It would like you to believe that it's clever and has depth but really, it's shallow and allows for as much facial expression from Damon as you'd get out of a block of wood. Despite the pretence - it's really a fairly unapologetic summer actioner.