Review by Annie Riordan
“Wanting people to listen, you can’t just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you’ll notice you’ve got their strict attention.” ~ John Doe, Se7en
I haven’t read any reviews for Elysium yet. I try not to read reviews for films I know I will be reviewing myself, eventually. But with 500+ movie nerds on my FB page, it’s kinda difficult to keep myself from hearing about whatever is currently dominating the cineplex screens. So, I knew going in that Elysium was directed by the same guy who directed District 9, that Matt Damon was in it, and that everyone’s biggest gripe with it thus far was the “thinly veiled” message it touted about healthcare and immigration.
To which I respond with: “Well DUH!” Did we all just forget about his first movie, “Apartheid Is Bad” aka District 9? Subtlety is not in Blomkamp’s vocabulary, people. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you may be able to enjoy the perfectly enjoyable and subtlety-free “Rich People Are Evil” aka Elysium. It’s not going to win any awards for in-depth character studies or underlying metaphors, but if you like watching things explode and seeing bad guys get their butts kicked, this isn’t such a bad way to waste two hours.
The year is 2154. Los Angeles is a blasted ruin. We assume that the rest of the world is probably just as shitty, but we’re focusing on L.A. here because downtown L.A. already looks like a cancerous tumor festering on the ass of the world, so it’s not much of a stretch to picture it as a post-apocalyptic Mecca. Also, it’s been entirely taken over by Mexicans. It’s every conservative Republican’s worst nightmare, except there’s no Republicans or conservatives left on terra firma: they’ve all rocketed off to Elysium, a super huge space station where everything is perfect, no one ever gets sick or old and every sprawling manicured mansion comes with a built-in medpod, a device that looks like a cross between a tanning bed and a full body x-ray machine which is capable of scanning every cell in your body and removing all trace of disease in 30 seconds or less. Everything is sunshine and whitebread up on Elysium. You can almost hear the theme song from Leave It To Beaver playing softly in the background.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, everything is shit on a shingle. Things are so shitty, in fact, that modern day Port-Au-Prince looks like a fucking resort spa by comparison. Amid the smoke and despair is Max, a Messianic Matt Damon with prison tattoos and a heart o’ gold. Max works the assembly line in the factory where police droids are manufactured to keep guys like him in line. Max is just trying to keep his nose clean after a stint in the Big House. Once upon a time, he was the best carjacker ever, a legend amongst thieves. Now he’s just Max, the last nice white guy left in the world. Slow motion Kodachrome flashbacks tell us that Max is an orphan, raised in a convent by nuns who amazingly weren’t sour-faced harridans with a penchant for physical abuse, and while there he made a lifelong friend in Frey, a pretty little girl whom he promised to take to Elysium someday. Okay, admittedly, we’re hit over the head repeatedly with the sweet flashbacks and childhood promises and the Mother Superior’s foretelling of Max’s specialness, and it all becomes just a little too cloying. My advice: hold your nose and swallow. We’ll get to the fun shit soon enough.
Anyway, one industrial accident later and Max receives a death sentence. He’s received a lethal dose of radiation and has five days to live. He knows his only chance for survival is to get to Elysium and find a medpod. So he does what any ex-con does: he goes back to the criminal underground looking to cash in on some favors. A seedy guy called Spider sets him up with a suicide mission: kidnap some guy, steal the information implanted in his brain and hijack a space transport thingie. Then, breach Elysium’s atmosphere, find a medpod, access the secret military spy satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit over the midwest, ID the limo by the vanity plate “MR. BIGGG” and get his approximate position, reposition the transmission dish on the remote truck to 17.32 degrees east, hit WESTAR 4 over the Atlantic, bounce the signal back into the aerosphere up to COMSAT 6, beam it back to SATCOM 2 transmitter number 137 and down on the dish on the back of Mr. Big’s limo… It’s almost too easy.
Okay yeah, I totally stole that last bit from Wayne’s World, but that’s about the jist of it. Anyway, they nail the corporate asshole (played by William Fichtner, who played the corporate asshole in The Dark Knight) and download the info, killing him in the process, and then realize that the info they stole is a reboot system for Elysium which Super Pinch Faced Jodie Foster is planning to upload so she can declare herself President of Elysium and kill anybody she wants to. If they can get Max up there and plug him into the hard drive, they can seize power and save the whole world!
Except Jodie Nail-File-Face Foster has an ace up her sleeve. His name is Kruger, as in Freddy, and he’s played with loathsome glee by Sharlto Copley, who played the good guy in District 9. Kruger is a despicable pig, a murderer, rapist and all around Not Very Nice Person. However, he’s been granted a full pardon and reinstatement as Big Bad Thugmeister in Charge of Army Dirtbag by Jodie Envelope-Opener-Face Foster if he can deliver Max to her undamaged so she can pull the reboot program out of his skull.
Things explode, there are slo-mo Matrixy fight sequences in which bones and armor shatter like glass, people die and pretty soon Max, his soulmate Frey and Frey’s dying-of-leukemia daughter are on their way to Elysium for Act III, which could not possibly be any cheesier if Europe’s “The Final Countdown” had been playing in the background the entire time.
I woke up this morning to complete this review and see that, seemingly overnight, the conservative party is throwing a tantrum over this film, not because the injustices it portrays are inaccurate, but because they are dead on correct. Blomkamp himself has stated that, although this movie takes place 140 years in the future, it is very much a statement about what is happening in this country right now. Believe it or not, I do not get paid to write these reviews, and so must earn a living by day working in the healthcare field, watching people get sick and die, many of them unable to afford their own medication despite the fact that most of them are employed and have insurance. Blomkamp’s message may be heavy handed, but if a smack across the face with a sack full of hammers is what is needed to get people’s attention, then so be it.
Okay, must reign self in before I go on an indignant pro-socialized medicine tear here. Suffice it to say: this film pissed off Rush Limbaugh, Mr. Oxycontin-Stuffed-Pork-Roast Himself. That in itself is reason enough to go see it. Maybe if enough people go see it, Rush’s fat tur-duck-en of a face will finally explode just like that dude in Scanners. Sorry, I can’t refrain from the Wayne’s World quotes today.
But hey, you don’t have to want to seek the political message within, addressing the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. There are plenty of reasons to go see Elysium on the big screen: #1 – stuff explodes. #2 – Diego Luna as Damon’s BFF Julio is smoking hawt in a Latino-version-of-Norman-Reedus kinda way. #3 – more stuff explodes. #4 – Sharlto Copley has nipple headlights. #5 – a shit ton of exploding stuff happens. #6 – Jodie Open-Razor-Blade-Face gets her comeuppance. #7 – there’s really not much else in the theaters right now worth watching. #F – you’re a gimp.
You get the idea.
Elysium is out now in the US, and hits the UK this Wednesday, 21st August, with alternate Scooby-Doo/Thelma and Louise endings. (Okay, not the last bit.)