Now Playing: Elysium

Jodie Foster kind of announced her retirement from acting this year – making Elysium her last role.  (Don’t worry, she recanted)  I’ve always like Ms. Foster and her reunion with the awesome William Fichtner had me very excited.  Didn’t hurt that Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley were also in there, both of whom I enjoyed in their previous South African cinematic excursions.

Turns out that Elysium was much more of an action movie than I had thought previously.  I sort of remember it being billed as a thinly veiled morality play about illegal aliens, inherent human rights, and the oppression of so many by so few.
("There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.")

It did that quite well, especially in the second half.

What it suffered from, though, was too many things blowing up.  It gets a little tedious watching things go kablooey for like 14 minutes.  Unless the editing is really really tight, it can get, well, boring.  I kept thinking “enough already, get back to the plot!”

When it did get back to the plot, it was very interesting.  Despite having the technology and the ability, some people choose to hoard their quality of life.  The scene where Max is fried by radiation in a sweatshop is keenly reminiscent of the Bangladeshi factory disaster – that hit home.  As does the medical tech that lives in the bedrooms of the ultra-rich while entire hospitals go without elsewhere.  So, too, the use of mercenaries to keep law and order in places where one doesn’t have any authority.  The analogy was a bit heavy-handed at times, but it is an original screenplay action movie, so I was willing to forgive the sometime-unsubtle approach.

The tech and effects were outright spectacular.  Very well-done, seamlessly presented and easily believed.  Everything, from the exoskeleton to the magnetic data relays, from the med units to the cylon-esque robots… all good.  The effects are what make this movie watchable and fascinating.

It was good movie, overall. The actors were quite capable and the directing was pretty sharp.  Editing is where the movie lost a lot of momentum.  Oh, and I could have done without the fake (British?) accent …what was that about?  I get they were going for an international Esperanto feel, but really…

3 out of 5 stars.