Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
In the year 2159, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes, a hard line government official, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that, if successful, will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.
Elysium has a visually compelling premise but squanders it with a paint-by-numbers narrative. The class-conflict allegory is blunt to the point of didacticism, and Max's personal mission collapses the film's broader themes into a formulaic action arc. Blomkamp's direction delivers competent gritty aesthetics — the Earth sequences have visceral texture — but the visual language never reaches the inventiveness of District 9. The cast (Damon, Foster, Copley) is serviceable; Foster is miscast and oddly stilted, while Copley's unhinged villain is a highlight but underused. The ending resolves the sprawling inequality narrative with an implausibly tidy button-press, which undercuts whatever thematic weight the film built. Overall it feels like a derivative retread of better dystopian science fiction.