Sunday 18 August 2013

Review: Elysium (2013)

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley

The Plot:
In the late 21st century, Earth was overpopulated, and became overly polluted. The rich and wealthy now live on Elysium, a high-tech space station free of disease, violence, war etc. while the underprivileged remain on Earth. Fast forward to 2152, and Max de Costa (Damon), a factory worker on Earth with a criminal record, gets into an accident at work and gets exposed to a fatal amount of radiation. He's given only 5 days to live, and enlists the help of an old friend to try and get to Elysium to cure the radiation poisoning. Max gets a robotic exo-skeleton attached to him which makes him stronger, and holds information vital to breaking into Elysium.

The problem here lies in Elysium's military, led by Defense Secretary Delacourt (Foster), who will stop at nothing to keep Elysium free of illegal immigrants from Earth. Delacourt plans on overriding Elysium's systems so she can become President. With the help of an agent by the name of Kruger (Copley), who has a similar exo-skeleton to Max, Delacourt intends to steal the information held by Max to override Elysium's systems. Max also tries to help the daughter of an old friend who has been diagnosed with leukemia, by taking her to Elysium to cure her.

Comments:
Amazing. Elysium was an absolutely fantastic film. Blomkamp did a wonderful job in creating both the ravaged, polluted Earth and the pristine, corrupted-government run Elysium. Each character was perfectly cast. Damon and Foster delivered stand-out performances as Max and Delacourt. Everything about the film was done excellently. The writing, the story, the direction from Blomkamp, all amazing, very reminiscent of Blomkamp's previous film District 9.

Rating:
9.5/10

Ryan Meyers

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