BEFORE: And Kristen Stewart was also in "Panic Room" with Jodie Foster (last seen in "Shadows and Fog"), so that makes this film next in the sci-fi chain.
AFTER: It's hard to not regard this one as "Obamacare in Space". So much news in the last two or three years about healthcare, and that debate has just sort of colored everything when you talk about the haves and the have-nots. And even though this film's not set in future America (umm, I don't think it is, but I guess it could be...) it feels like the Earth is a stand-in for the inner cities, and Elysium stands for wherever the rich people live.
First off, we have to check - are we dealing with a utopia, or a dystopia? I have to go with the latter here, with sort of a "District 9" or "Mad Max" feel to the planet. Once again, people fucked up the Earth, only this time it wasn't with nukes but your standard over-population and over-pollution. Our society will always have the rich and the poor, because that's a by-product of capitalism. But somehow America became the only country that has both a childhood hunger problem AND a childhood obesity problem. What we really have is a distribution problem. Simple solution - just let the skinny kids take food away from the fat kids. There's your real "hunger games" - oh, and you're welcome.
But back to healthcare - in this future we have flying spaceships, but the rabble still drive beat-up cars. The rich get to live on a floating satellite wonderland, the rabble are stuck in what look like ghettos and work in radiation factories. Even these super-strength generating exoskeletons that seem to be all the rage - the rich get to have ones that you just wear over your clothes, and the poor get the ones that have to be attached quite painfully by being drilled into their backs. Doesn't seem fair.
The lead character here seems to be designed to suffer - working at the radiation factory leaves him on death's door, and on top of that some idiot drills an exoskeleton into his back - so he's got super-strength, but is also presumably in incredible pain. Then they stick something into his brain so that he can mind-wipe a rich guy and get all his internet passwords and his bank PIN or something, essentially becoming a walking hacker. You'd think all of his conversations would involve Nigerian inheritances or penis enlargements... All he has to do at this point is fight three soldiers who can regenerate from damage and also have super-strength to get onto the space station where his brain can hack into the system and sign up for universal healthcare - which is not easy if you're using the wrong browser.
Living on Elysium is not all that it's cut out to be, either - the government official who runs the place, Secretary Delacourt, suffers from a debilitating disease that apparently causes her jaw to be constantly clenched and makes her talk in a strange French/South African accent. Or was that just an acting choice? I couldn't tell.
NITPICK POINT: If one of the biggest problems on the planet was over-population, the solution of bringing magical healthcare to everyone seems like a misguided solution in the end. If too many people start living healthier and longer, that doesn't fix the overpopulation problem, it makes it worse. Yes, that sounds really callous of me, but if resources are running out, the only proper solution is for people to stop having so many kids. Birth control and "zero population growth" practices are the best viable long-term solution for making sure that our planet can support humans in the future. I don't have kids, so I'm doing my part - what about you? Those families on reality TV with 18 or 19 kids, by extension, really hate our planet.
Also starring Matt Damon (last heard in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron"), Sharlto Copley (last seen in "The A-Team"), Alice Braga (last seen in "Predators"), Diego Luna (last seen in "Open Range"), William Fichtner (last seen in "The Lone Ranger"), Wagner Moura.
RATING: 6 out of 10 robot cops
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