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Review: Elysium

By Christine Petralia

Image courtesy of TriStar Pictures

August 10, 2013
 
Written, produced and directed by Neill Blomkamp, also of District 9, Elysium is a sci-fi action film that deals with immigration, health care and class issues. I wouldn’t call it the top film of the summer, but it was pretty damn good. Had a lot of action and a decent plot.
 
The year is 2154, Earth is overpopulated and filled with disease. Years earlier, the wealthy migrated, or rather bought their way, to Elysium, an advanced space station in the sky. It is filled with healthy people, as they have machines that cure them of everything from broken bones to cancer. However, not everything is sunshine and rainbows, as the defense secretary Jessica Delacourt (Jodi Foster) is making deals to ‘reboot’ Elysium’s system so she can become president.
 
Back on Earth, there are robots, built by the same company that built Elysium, to keep order. However, there are people who get out of line. And there is a group of people who sell IDs illegally to others looking to get up to Elysium. Max Da Costa (Matt Damon) is an ex-con living in the slums of Los Angeles and working for the robot company. While injured waiting for a bus to work, Da Costa runs into an old friend Frey (Alice Braga), who is now a nurse. Looking to reconnect, he asks her out, but she tells him now is not a good time in her life. We learn later her daughter is dying from leukemia.
 
While at work, Da Costa gets exposed to a massive amount of radiation and is given five days to live. He seeks out Spider (Wagner Moura), who is the guy running the illegal operations to Elysium, for help, hoping he’ll give him a free ride up. Instead, Spider makes a deal with him, he wants Da Costa to get a ‘brain implant’ so they can steal the secrets of someone from Elysium. They happen to pick the guy Delacourt made a deal with to overthrow the Elysium government.
 
Of course, all doesn’t go according to plan, and Da Costa goes on the run. Delacourt sends her guys after him and soon, they are all crash landing on Elysium. Spider’s team follows them up and somehow, they devise a plan to use the info they got from the man’s brain in order to allow all humans access to Elysium.
 
There’s a lot more to this, but I don’t want to give it all away. Damon does an OK job as Da Costa. And the child they got to play a younger version of his character could have actually been Damon as a child. I really liked Sharlto Copley as Kruger, the guy sent to track down Da Costa. One of the craziest scenes was when Copley’s character got his face blown off. Crazy stuff!
 
For some it might be a little too graphic, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen on CSI or ER. I don’t know if the IMAX was worth it. But I think it’s definitely worth a go in the theaters.
 
 

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All works created by Christine McGrath; Centereach, New York  All Rights Reserved 2024

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