You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Elysium.
Reviews are mixed
“Even Matt Damon can’t save ..” reads one headline. “Thought provoking and exciting,” reads another.
The Crazy Critique likes Elysium giving it 4 of 5 crazies.
It’s Mad Max meets Escape from New York. It’s Water World meets any movie with a prophecy of fulfillment.
Elysium is big budget Post apocalyptic action. Its plot is woven with the threads of rich versus poor and human rights indignities.
Unlike many futuristic films where the characters are so disguised by the horrible mask of the future, Matt Damon creates a character you clearly root for. He is gritty and tough, yet vulnerable.
Matt Damon is a child of Earth, a post apocalyptic toilet.
As a boy he spends his nights staring into the heavens where Elysium, a golden ring of opulence is in geo-synchronous orbit. It is Damon’s life long quest to go there, to provide his only friend a better life, ultimately to change the world.
As a boy growing up in the soiled sickness of Los Angeles, a nun tells him he has a greater purpose. Her words will prove the prophetic catalyst throughout the film.
As a young man we learn he is more sinner than saint. He is a car thief, a felon, a dirty factory worker who is constantly fighting the urge to return to his old criminal ways.
The first plot point takes place approximately 30 minutes in after he is critically injured and facing death, he is forced to join a legion of pirates who export human cargo, illegal aliens, to Elysium.
It’s analogous to Mexicans sneaking over the border into the USA in shipping containers.
Damon is no doubt a versatile actor who makes you care about his character, Max De costa.
Like Neo in the Matrix, Damon is a part of a prophecy to overcome oppressiveness and improve humanity.
Jody Foster, Secretary Rhodes, is the villain. She is Elysium’s secretary of defense who runs this rotational nirvana a hundred miles above Earth. She easily kills, and directs human rights violations. Her goal is singularly simple:
Segregate Elysium from the filthy disgust and wretched sickness that exists below. Elysium is a castle floating in space. It is Beverly Hills just outside of South Central, L.A. No one permitted with authorized citizenship.
And if Jody Foster is the antagonist, Agent Kruger, a singularly evil assassin is her henchman.
It is violent and action packed and laced with F bombs. But the violence, unlike a Rambo movie, makes sense.
I found the movie to be compelling and unpredictable.
Not every critic saw it that way:
Christopher Orr of the Atlantic says “Though Elysium is a testament to Director Blomkamp’s extraordinary skill as a visual filmmaker, it does not speak nearly so well for his gifts as a writer.”
Globe and Mail “A cautionary tale about the dangers of squandering resources that wastes its own talent.”
Tom Long Detroit News “An epic about saving humanity that feels more manufactured than human.”
Elysium is a nice escape from our present day reality. It has rich under tones that make you think as you leave the theater.
You can’t ask for too much more from a film now-a-days.
Life’s Crazy™