Matt Damon is a factory worker named Max Da Costa in a futuristic crapsack society. He gets exposed to radiation while at work, which winds up shortening his lifespan to a few days. His only chance to live is to head off to the rich peoples place, known as Elysium, where they have regeneration pods.
He goes to an old friend who works for a mob boss and he gets a cybernetic exoskeleton implanted on him for a heist job.
Unfortunately, the person he's stealing the data from is protected by some insane freaking mercenaries, who shoot at them and wound Max.
Max goes to his old friend Frey, who asks him to take her daughter to Elysium with him to cure her Leukemia, but he refuses because he doesn't want to put Frey in danger.
Specifically, the danger that he's in from those Mercenaries.
But they get captured by them anyways.
Max saves them and delivers the data to a dude named Spider, who finds out the program can open up access to Elysium's regeneration pods to anyone on earth.
To be honest, this movie moves way too fast to be easily summarized, and I'm finding it hard to talk about. It's not what I would call a great movie by any means, but I would definitely say that it's a movie worth watching. Given how bad some of the other movies I've reviewed this year (And some I'm yet to review) it was certainly a better and more meaningful watch than say, Sharktopus.
Or for that matter, either of the Transformers sequels. At least this movie had some interesting characters in it besides the giant robots.....
No, I'm not quite done with the review.... I just ran out of things to say for a while.
So anyways, the movie ends on a rather melancholy note, with the poorer citizens of earth being given access to much better living conditions, and better medical care.
The director has said that this movie is not about the future, but rather about now. The message about the state of the world can easily be missed if you've not been paying attention recently, or to future generations who may not have the best idea of the state of the world in 2013. On the other hand, this movie could go down in history like To Kill A Mockingbird. Time will tell.
Among those approached to play the role of Max were Watkin Tudor Jones, a south-african rapper who I've never heard of, who turned down the role despite being a fan of this team's earlier work on District 9.
The role was then offered to a rapper I have heard of, Eminem. He wanted the movie to be shot in Detroit, which I could see, especially considering how bad-off Michigan has been over the last several decades, but that wasn't an option for the studios producing the film.
The effects in this movie were created by studying older science-fiction, and I like how they put them together. The sets, costumes, and props all have a very Aliens-like feel to them. I like the way the movie looks, personally. It never really had any moments where I said "That looks fake" or "That was chroma-keyed"
Now, there were a few things that didn't sit well with me. The movie is a little too fast-paced for my taste, and it's a pretty gritty movie, coming off of some slicker science-fiction like Star Wars and Star Trek.
Fortunately it's not the hardest of science-fiction, which would do a lot towards ticking me off.
I might get tired of that kind of gritty sci-fi after a while, like I did of The Walking Dead. Who knows.
So my summary was a little lame, but unlike a game it's a lot harder to talk about a movie without spoiling it, because you can't talk about gameplay as well.
So in the end, the movie was swift, punchy, and interesting.
I give it a 9.7* rating.
This review might not be the best I've ever done, but I hope to do better. I've been sitting on this movie for several months now, so I might decide to go back and write up a new review after I've seen it again.
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