Review of Elysium (2013) by Rwarren — 12 Aug 2013

Save Your Money! I went to Elysium expecting a decent movie. What I got was a dull witted, trite, stereotyped, and thinly veiled political rant. A rant masquerading as an action film. Matt Damon, Jodie Foster and the rest of the cast were trying their best, but all failed to connect or show a shred of true soul. The many attempts the movie made to state political or historical simile fell abysmally flat.

First, there was the "evil rich vs the virtuous, enslaved poor." Then the Director plays "Homeland Security as psychotic, rapist, murdering thugs." The plot thins when "withholding medical care from the poor because you're evil," gets launched. Finally there's a Moses or MLK-like "I may not get to the Promised Land with you..." attempt which falls on its face. During all of this, the Director and writers somehow seemed to think blowing everything up and killing anything that moved, covered their own shortcomings. Hardly!

All of the rants and stereotypes fell horribly short of the mark. The camera work in this sad excuse for a film is nothing short of choppy, atrocious and may well induce motion-sickness in viewers unfortunate enough to be subject to it. The story line is trite, hackneyed illogical and weak. Dialogue is atrocious and subtitles of uninteresting and "non-plot moving" conversation are included for no reason at all!

The lack of valid material to work with leaves the actors flat and uninteresting. The various scenes are confused and absolutely rancid in set-up and execution.

I repeat...don't bother. Save your money and watch a kiddie flick.