I’ve had a funny relationship with Matt Damon. No, we haven’t ever cross-dressed and skipped down Parisian boulevards or gone on anecdotal backpacking adventures up the Appalachian Trail. I mean only that, at first I loathed him in every role he played, then loved him when he poked fun at himself with the aid of Sarah Silverman’s guitar strumming and crude, though hilarious, lyrics and finally regained a newfound appreciation of all of the films I had at first despised.
So, up until last week, old Matty was in my good books. YouTube clips, Hunting his goodwill and one of Ocean’s 11, 12 or 13, he could do on wrong.
So why, oh why Mr. Damon, did you have to drop your pants and unleash the contents of your bladder all over my opinion of you?
Elysium is set forty years hence. Los Angeles looks like a bad day in Bogota and the world’s über-rich have abandoned the cesspool that the planet has become in favour of the elitist off-world colony of Elysium, a space station which gently orbits the Earth in mockery of its remaining impoverished inhabitants.
Damon plays Max, an ex-petty criminal desperately trying to keep his head above water in a world hurtling like a runaway train toward implosion. In a freak work accident, he receives a catastrophic dose of radiation, robbing him of all but five of his remaining days. His only chance is to return to the criminal underworld from which he escaped to illegally emigrate to Elysium.
The plot gets a little incongruous from here, but, in essence, he reunites with his childhood sweetheart whose daughter is in the final stages of leukemia and also in desperate need of the space station’s vastly superior medical facilities, steals an Elysium resident’s memories, has numerous run-ins with the most excessively over-acting South African mercenary I have ever witnessed and plays as much havoc with Jodie Foster’s planned coup d’Etat as her appallingly executed faux-English accent played with my ear drums.
The first half-hour of Elysium fills you with hope; hope for the main character’s success and safety, hope that his love of formative years will not go unrequited and hope, dear God, so much hope that this will be a good movie. But sadly, all of those hopes are unfounded.
I don’t like to tear strips off films. I try to give them a fair go, view them from all perspectives and, while conveying my opinion, give as broad a review as possible. But Elysium simply can’t adhere to that formula. It takes itself too seriously to be a light-hearted romp through a Sci-Fi action-thriller, but it isn’t produced with enough strength to be a dark cult classic such as Blade Runner or, more contemporarily, the new spin on Total Recall. The ratings are too high and blood and gore to prolific for a younger audience, but the plot is too cavernously potholed to go unnoticed by adults. You have to think too much to keep up with the scattered storyline to be able to not think too much and just enjoy the visuals.
It is true that Elysium has potential. There is definitely something that grips you throughout and paralyses your legs into remaining seated for its duration, but it is distinctly against your will. There is a thread of enjoyment that runs through the film, but that thread is tenuous at best, strained to breaking point at some moments while left a tangled, knotted mess at others before unraveling completely when Kruger, the said over-acting South African mercenary becomes a significant part of the storyline. His forced accent is so abysmal it makes you cringe to watch, his acting as an Afrikaans hitman so excessive it verges on comedic and the Boer cliche he portrays so terrible it makes Scharzenegger look like Gielgud. But get this: in doing my proper research and, in fact, wanting to further mock the actor’s dreadfully forced accent, I discovered he actually IS South African! As Aussies everywhere winced at Crocodile Dundee’s international representation of each and every one of them in the 1980’s, so too will South Africans mute their accents in shame in the wake of Elysium.
Visually, there are certainly some moments I attest are nothing short of stunning, but it seems the budget was replete after these splurges in CGI, leaving nothing but a cardboard box, some superglue and a shoestring with which to cobble together the remaining props and scenery.
Why, after such a positive, diverse and celebrated run, Matt Damon would stoop to this level AND shave his head is beyond my fathoming. All I can say is that I hope he won the bet.
RATING:
Review by: Tommy Leitch – www.subcutanea.net | courtesy of Palace Cinemas. Byron Bay