Elysium

Ok, so I've been a bit lazy for the last few months and not posted anything new, but I did get halfway through this one a while back so I thought I would finish it before I started a new post. 

Elysium

I really wanted to like this movie. Given its South African links (reuniting director Neill Blomkamp and actor Sharlto Copley, both of whom did such a brilliant job on District 9) I was ready to proclaim this another "Proudly South African" product (like me!). Besides, this movie had a much bigger budget and more star power than District 9. How much could go wrong?

Well, a lot, apparently. First a quick synopsis: In the future all the rich people live in the sky (well, on a space station to be exact), while the poor people live on dusty, dirty, overcrowded Earth. The rich people also have this miraculous medical machine that heals everything but for some reason the rich don't choose to share that technology with the poor. Matt Damon plays one of the po' folk who needs the magic healing machine in the sky, but obviously the well-to-do don't want any dirty poor people on their space station so they try and keep them all out. Damon basically spends the movie trying to get to the machine while dying from radiation poisoning from a work mishap. Whatever happened to ridiculously patronising health and safety rules, eh?

I hate to say it, but Matt Damon was probably one of the very few good-ish things about this movie. Damon tries his best but it's not enough to save this movie - the writing is terrible and it shows in characters like Elysium's defence minister Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and Copley's mercenary Kruger. These villains are one dimensional and over the top, more like caricatures from a comic book than characters from a big budget movie, and completely unbelievable. 

I found it hard to care about any of the protagonists and also thought that there was a lack of chemistry between Damon and his love interest. Everything was just kind of bland.

Highlight of the movie for me was Kruger singing "Jan Pierewiet" to his captive on the plane/chopper/flying contraption, whatever it is (so I don't know my flying contraptions ok?!). Not because it was worthy of an X-factor audition, but because it's one of those things only South Africans would know about. Kind of like an inside joke. The action sequences are good, though and the part when Kruger's face gets blown off is also pretty cool.

Rating: 4/10