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| Review by Greg Vellante |
Produced by Bill Block, Neill Blomkamp, Simon Kinberg
Written and Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster,
Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna,
Wagner Moura, William Fichtner
Sony Pictures / Rated R
If anything were to strike you first while watching Elysium, odds are it will be the scale.
A sweeping shot across the futuristic wasteland of Los Angeles makes the city look like one giant, overpopulated trash heap. Set in 2154, director Neill Blomkamp paints our planet with such apocalyptic despair that one half-expects WALL-E to be picking up the pieces in five to ten years. The wealthy and privileged live on Elysium, a gorgeous creation in the sky that strongly resembles the cyclical space station of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey if it were to be blown up and turned into an entire planet.
The result is downright stunning, and through visual prowess alone Blomkamp knocks Elysium— his second feature as one of cinema’s most interesting and endlessly promising science fiction storytellers — out of the ballpark and into another universe.
He delivers, through and through.
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