Film Diary 2013: Elysium

Entrusted by an independent studio with a whopping budget and an intriguing premise,  one redolent of the current political and socio-economic climate, here was a chance for the Summer of 2013 to end with a bang. Something that showed all those other bloated blockbusters that you could combine thrills and spectacle with intelligence and a strong message.

Matt Damon plays Max, an orphan, now working in a large arms manufacturing plant for Armadyne Systems - run by a pleasingly snooty John Carlyle (William Fichtner). Unfortunately after an industrial accident Max is exposed to a great deal of radiation and given 5 days to live. There is no cure for him on Earth.

Above Earth, in a gigantic floating space station (the titular Elysium) live the rich, the 1%ers, who fled our doomed planet, and now have all mod-cons up amongst the stars, so much so that they have little machines that can cure all disease. Not everything is perfect up on Elysium, at least, not for security chief Delacourt (Jodie Foster) who takes extreme measures to curb the ever present attempts of immigrants to get their grubby mitts on Elysium's healthcare.

So, a desperate Max wants to get up to Elysium, and - in return for passage - agrees to do one big job for the rebellious Spider (Wagner Moura), this happens to be stealing the hard-wired banking information of an inhabitant of Elysium whislt they're down on Earth, and naturally Max picks Carlyle.

The film then hurriedly see-saws from being a sort of grimy, gritty political intrigue thriller, to turning into a heist movie, then a cat and mouse picture (as Max takes refuge with Alice Braga's nurse Frey), before winding up in a predictable seige finale, with various shoot-outs and punch-ups along the way. It lacks all of the inventiveness and spark that made District 9 such a treat, even when that film drifted into shoot-em-up territory.

Overall the film doesn't really seem to have a firm grip on its own identity, there are nods to Total Recall that push things into darkly comic ground, far more interesting than the seriousness that pervades its tone elsewhere. Meanwhile the performances are almost uniformally dour, with Sharlto Copley - as rogue assassin Kruger - delivering a cartoonishly monstrous villain that seems to have wandered in from a different film altogether.

In short, it's a shambles with good intentions, but it doesn't add anything interesting beyond it's obvious message of things not really being all that fair. Blomkamp remains an intriguing director, but he's found himself taking a stumble back rather than a step forward with this sophomore effort.

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