Elysium – DVD review

Neill Blomkamp, 2013

Sony

Elysium looms into view like the bona fide action sci-fi behemoth it is, with a set-up as old as Metropolis: a fascistic two-tier future in which the rich elite enjoy eternal good health in the clouds while workers toil and decay on a sickly and scorched planet Earth.

Presiding over the gardened utopia, a French Jodie Foster comes over as a latter-day Marie Antoinette, dismissing desperate migrants with a callous disregard while on terra infirma blue-collar everyman Matt Damon undergoes alarming Black & Decker brain surgery to become a supercharged but reluctant revolutionary leader. Neill Blomkamp (District 9) proves again that he knows how to orchestrate big canvas scifi, even if the Obamacare moral overtones are occasionally overplayed.