On the surface, writer/director Neill Blomkamp's political allegory Elysium has all the right ingredients: a well-crafted dystopia complete with cyberpunk favelas and a sleek off-world colony, a hero in a cool exo-suit, a strong message about class struggles, Matt Damon. And yet, for all of its exciting moments and visual splendor, it gets so caught up in trying to be edgy and hit all the necessary notes it forgets to come together and be a good movie.
Set in 2154, Blomkamp's world is one where the chasm between rich and poor is astronomically deep and wide–the poor live in squalor on Earth while the mega-rich live in a space-based colony called Elysium. The poor attempt to fly up to Elysium for a better life; Elysium's forces shoot them down. Terrestrial have-nots live in favelas and scramble to get health care, the haves are waited on by robots and have nigh-magical "med beds" that heal any ailments.
(Spoiler alert: Plot points for Elysium to follow.)
Enter Max De Costa (Damon), this dystopia's accidental Robin Hood. He was raised in a Catholic orphanage and always dreamed of living on Elysium. (Presumably everyone does.) Eventually, he grew up to become a car thief and after years in jail is now working in a Los Angeles plant that manufactures the droids that serve and protect on Elysium and police brutally on Earth. When he accidentally gets trapped in a machine at the plant that exposes him to lethal levels of radiation, he's given five days to live and a pile of pills from a robot that informs him the drugs "will keep you functioning until your death" (yes, even the droids run by the wealthy are heartless bastards).
Left with no other options, Max asks his former underworld buddy Spider (Wagner Moura), a futuristic cyberpunk "coyotaje," to smuggle him up to Elysium where he can be cured. Spider offers to help, but only if Max will allow himself to be fitted with an "exo-suit" and jack valuable information from a rich guy, which in 2154 is stored in a little chip attached to a person's brain.
Meanwhile, Elysium's anti-immigrant defense secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster, sporting Armani suits and a fairly undecipherable accent) has asked John Carlyle (William Fichtner), who runs the robot company Max works for, to create a program that could essentially oust the president on Elysium. (Man, even in the future cyber security sucks.) Carlyle writes the code, uploads it to his head and, naturally, becomes the target of Max's heist. After Max downloads the Elysium-reboot code into his head during the cyber-robbery, he becomes the No. 1 target for Delacourt and her mercenaries, led by Kruger (Blomkamp favorite Sharlto Copley). He also pulls his childhood friend Frey (Alice Braga) into the mix by going to her for medical help–and leading Kruger to her and her leukemia-stricken daughter, who inevitably become cowering damsels in distress.
Then, after that fair amount of intriguing set-up and world-building, Elysium takes a turn and heads off course. When we first meet Max, he seems like he's pretty much just out for himself. Like everyone in Blomkamp's grave new world, he simply wants to survive. But at some point, Max changes from an ordinary guy just trying to survive to a noble Robin Hood trying to save every have-not in the world–a shift that happens very suddenly and without much explanation. And he's not the only one whose motivations pivot sharply partway through the film. The katana-wielding Kruger goes from hired thug to power-hungry misogynistic super-creep with bad jokes, while Spider transforms from a self-serving underworld boss to a sudden advocate for do-gooder revolt.
Ultimately, these characters are supposed to be the human face of Elysium's oppression, but sympathizing with them–no matter how easy on the surface–gets muddled by a script that spends so little time on any one person or their plight that it's hard to invest. Damon and company do their best, but they're not given a lot to work with. And when it's all said and done–thanks to a fairly overt deus ex machina–the movie's characters seem like they're there purely to serve a narrative function, not complete a journey. All the great details set up in the first half of the movie either go nowhere, create logical holes that never get filled, or just get forcibly tidied up in a way that feels a little too neat and clean.
Blomkamp—like he did with his critically-acclaimed film District 9—still manages to create a very unique vision of the future, full of stunning visual effects, well-choreographed fight scenes in exo-suits, and a very textured world. But where District 9 served as an allegory for apartheid in an otherwise great and well-rounded movie about alien slums, Elysium spends so much time showing and telling us why closed borders and restricted access to healthcare are bad news that there's little beyond those issues and no characters—including Max—really worth rooting for.
But hey, at least Blomkamp has a point to make. Futuristic sci-fi is full of parables (see: The Matrix trilogy, Brazil, They Live, WALL-E) but rarely are they this overt. Still, Blomkamp's message about the inhumane nature of inequality would probably go down easier if there weren't so many inexplicable "wait, what?" moments. Exo-suits and "med beds" look cool and all, but they can't replace well-rounded characters with clear motivations–just like movies with political allegories can't get so bogged down in sending a message that they forget to be believable or entertaining.
