Sci-fi wunderkind Neill Blomkamp returns with a case of the sophomore blues. Elizabeth Kerr reports.

A few years back, an unknown director was plucked from the bowels of short filmmaking for YouTube, by one member of the current Holy Trinity of the genre, geekdom, Peter Jackson (the other two being JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon), and given a bundle of cash to make his first feature film. That film was the relatively low budget District 9, which would go on to win critical acclaim, box office success and BAFTA and Oscar nominations for best picture. District 9 was a prime example of what sci-fi does best: comment on the world right now (sci-fi isn't about the future) so engagingly and entertainingly even non-sci-fi fans wanted to see it, based on strong word of mouth.

So needless to say, the expectations for Neill Blomkamp's sophomore effort are sky high. What made D9 so strong was Blomkamp's shameless socio-political subtext (admittedly not so "sub") and his penchant for allegory. Blomkamp's star began rising at a time when filmmakers typically ran screaming for the hills for fear of any sort of alienating message, perish the thought of losing out on a piece of the international box office haul. D9's $200 million-plus take would belie the idea that European or Asian audiences wouldn't "get" it.

So Blomkamp returns to the rickety, broken down future in Elysium for a muscular sci-fi actioner about the very contemporary issue of unequal wealth distribution and the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots - in this case the have-nots being anyone excluded from the 1 percent. It's 2154 and Los Angeles is a sprawling mess of a mega-city. It's all dust, rubble and smog, the former glitter replaced by pollution and over-population (like the rest of the world) that have transformed the city into a sprawling favela, or township, or shantytown. Take your pick. It seems Mexico has spread north, and the ultra-wealthy have fled the teeming masses to Elysium, an idyllic space station habitat, free of disease, poverty, grime, crime and immigrants with fewer assets than a small nation.

Lording over this utopia is so-called defense secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster doing a bizarre Angela Merkel imitation), a hard-line protectionist who has no qualms about shooting right out of the sky, civilian shuttles trying to get medical care on Elysium. She argues they're akin to terrorists, and once Elysium lets it guard down, it's game over.

In making Elysium a sterile haven Blomkamp manages to have his sci-fi both ways. The habitat conforms to the futurism of white that recalls 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX1138 and Logan's Run. These are the futures where the totalitarian rot is carefully concealed beneath a layer of shiny new electronics and starched uniforms. Down on Earth, he's opted for the decaying, worn, despairing future where resources are scarce and everyone's a mercenary of Blade Runner, The Road Warrior and most recently Pacific Rim. Blomkamp and production designer Philip Ivey have done a grand job of world-building on Earth, where the population is resigned to impersonal robots performing "customer service" and hospitals look like they're in war zones.

In this LA, ex-con and ace thief Max (Matt Damon) is just trying to get buy, stay out of trouble and get through a day at his drone assembly line job. An industrial accident gets him irradiated and leaves him with five days to live, but the factory response is a few tablets and escort out the door. Not wanting to die and knowing the magic body boxes in every home in Elysium could cure him in about 30 seconds, Max goes off to see his old partner in crime, Spider (Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, Elite Squad). Spider agrees to shuttle him off world, for a price: a neural download from an Elysium citizen to help with his fight against the injustice of Elysium's exclusive policy.

What follows is a standard action-heist yarn where Damon gets to be Bourne again, and save the world from sub-standard medical care. For what it is, it's an efficient enough thriller with a delicate thread running beneath the surface, about the connection between power, progress and wealth. Still bitter about the radiation thing and being cut loose (if ever someone had an airtight worker's compensation case it's this guy) Max targets the factory boss, John Carlyle (William Fichtner in fine sniveling, elitist form), but gets in over his head with the data he swipes from Carlyle's head. There's also a conspiracy afoot to unseat the more dovish president and Carlyle's data is the key. In any heist movie that should give the thief the upper hand. It doesn't.

Based on just the heist/conspiracy elements, Elysium is satisfactory for what it is. The problems come from the little details that make no sense, given how the film started and the issues that are dangled and dropped. On the narrative front: the world is a filthy mess, but LA tap water is still drinkable; having the magic body box in every home sure makes the rebellion a lot easier; robots have taken over most jobs on Earth - except the ones that run the risk of irradiation. On the thematic side, Blomkamp has built the physical world of 2154 but not the emotional and psychological world to go with it. The specifics of how the world got this way aren't important. The beauty of good sci-fi is in extracting fiction from fact. But we never really get to know Max or empathize with his frustration on a visceral level. Spider is little more than an angry slum dweller who spits out his fury (literally) and yells a lot. Delacourt enjoys human suffering? On that level, Elysium fails to connect the way D9 did, even though it tries in that most manipulative and offensive of ways. Maybe Blomkamp genuinely wanted to include a long lost love interest (Alice Braga) and her sick child that to give Max the inspiration he needed to "do the right thing" but it felt forced. That kind of sentimental nonsense, whose absence made D9 so fresh, is the kind of nonsense $100 million from Sony, rather than the story, demands. At least it's escaped occasionally by the totally enjoyable turn from Blomkamp favorite Sharlto's Copley as unhinged security agent Kruger. Give this guy his own movie.

Elysium opens in Hong Kong on September 26.

A simple brain heist goes bad for Max (Matt Damon) and ends with an Elysium killer security agent after him.

(HK Edition 09/20/2013 page7)