4/5
Neill Blomkamp's Elysium will, of course, draw comparisons to the director's previous work, District 9, since both are sci-fi action movies employing hyper-realistic special effects, cinema verité-style camerawork, and plots that play like morality tales about the maltreatment and subjugation of a population's citizens. While the combination of all those things felt exhilarating and unprecedented 5 years ago, here they feel a bit tired.
Elysium, like District 9 and Children of Men, delivers a precisely-detailed and complexly-envisioned future. But the characters with which it inhabits that world are unexciting; their quest is uncompelling; the stakes are underwhelming. It is not enough for the background to be thematically interesting, because the foreground is what will get our blood pumping and bring us to our feet cheering. Instead the story feels like a pretty barebones excuse for fights and explosions. Luckily, the (rather sparse) action is exceptional, leaps and bounds better than most of what we are seeing in theaters today. Some scenes are so visually arresting, so stunningly beautiful, that they seem somehow operatic and timeless. That they are simultaneously violently graphic and viscerally horrifying does not diminish their value, but simply brands them in our minds.
Elysium is ultimately not as good as District 9. While perhaps more technically impressive than his previous work, it needed a stronger story to unlock all the potential it had. What frustrates me is that we know Blomkamp can do better. And I sincerely hope he pulls through on the next one, because I love watching his movies.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/