Elysium (2013)

I was a fan of Neill Blomkamp's debut, "District 9." While it was as subtle in its social commentary as a flare gun fired off in an elevator, it did its job quite well and was a fun action film despite the overly shaky camera. After seeing his sophomore feature, "Elysium," I get the feeling that "a fun action film that is too jittery with the camera and too telegraphed with the social justice angle" is going to be a common phrase heaped upon Blomkamp's filmography. To be fair, there are a lot worse things that you could say about a movie, so don't feel like that's writing the guy off. He's looking to have quite the career ahead of him as a director.

The film takes place in the future, where the Earth is a barely habitable, overcrowded wasteland, and the rich live in a space station called Elysium, which looks a lot like The Citadel from "Mass Effect." It's a paradise that has everything you could possibly want, including perfect health and essentially immortality as they possess this crazy technology that instantly cures anything wrong with you. Anything. Seriously, at one point a dude gets his face blown off with a grenade, but since his brain is stilling functioning they just strap him in there, it reconstructs his head, and he's fine. It even keeps his beard. Basically it's that thing from "The Fifth Element" that reconstructs Milla Jovovich. Anyway, the rich are quite happy up in Elysium, and like to kill anyone who tries to smuggle themselves onto there.

Dah dah dah dah dah...dut dut...dut dut...

Meanwhile everyone else on Earth lives in squalor, including Max (Matt Damon), a reformed criminal who's just trying to save up enough money to one day make it up to Elysium, a dream that is a pathetic long-shot at best. When an accident on the job leaves him with five days to live, he kick-starts his dream by rejoining the criminal world to make it up to Elysium and their life-saving medbays. During his quest he finds himself in the middle of a struggle that could mean the end of Elysium's isolationist policy, and the salvation of countless millions on Earth.

Man, Nerf used to be awesome back in the day.

The film is a thinly veiled but well deserved middle finger to the overly wealthy, and it's not subtle with it at all (like, AT ALL), but the characters are well written enough and believable enough to pull the story off. While Jodie Foster's performance as Delacourt, the main villain for most of the movie, may come across as slightly over-the-top in her wickedness, it can't be said that her actions as the head of security on a place like Elysium didn't make sense, as did the actions of pretty much everyone else in the film. Even the setup probably wouldn't be that far off from reality, if the technology was there. Compare that with crap like "The Purge," which took place in a land where nothing made sense. With a story like this which is actually fairly plausible, the whole lack of subtlety aspect seems less and less important when you consider that at least for once it's well done social commentary.

While Matt Damon and the rest of the cast are all fine, the guy who steals the show was Sharlto Copley as Kruger, a mercenary working for Delacourt. I really like Copley as an actor, and here he's this off-the-wall psychopath who goes through everything that's around him like a sweaty wrecking ball, sneering in his barely decipherable Afrikaans accent. He's a delight to watch. He almost seems like he belongs in another movie, actually. He's way too much of a Bond Number Two henchman for this. But he is difficult to understand.

"Oy inno gwanna kill 'im dee boyke."

"...I'm sorry boss, you're gonna boink what?"

Like "District 9," the story builds up the majority of the first half of the film before being a straight up action flick by the mid-point. Some may call that a slow straight, but decent characterization is nothing to roll your eyes at. And when it does fire up all of its cylinders, "Elysium" is a hard-hitting, violent romp that has enough "OH DAMN" moments to satisfy the action fan. Like I said earlier, the camera does tend to drift to the shaky side of things, but it's dialed back a bit from how distracting it was in "District 9."

Overall this one was pretty satisfying. It's not going to reinvent the wheel or even be remembered with any great reverence, if remembered by many at all given a couple years, but it's a decent entry into the annals of the Sci-Fi/Action genre. And while it may be doomed to be lumped in with the many, many films that are just like it in terms of plot and quality, that doesn't make it bad. It just makes it "A Sci-Fi/Action Movie." And you've seen those before. If you want to see another one, hey, try "Elysium." It's decent.

Check out the trailer for "Elysium!"

THE BOTTOM LINE - A competent and satisfying film for those who are in the mood for some distopian sci-fi. Sharlto Copley is the main attraction, and makes it worth watching even if the rest wasn't anything too mind-blowing. It's a little awkward in how overt it is with the social commentary, but that doesn't mean it's not completely correct in what it's saying. That goes a long way.

Europa Report (2013)

Way back when I first started this blog I did an entry for a movie called "Apollo 18." In fact it was only the third post I did. You can tell because it's not as good and far less long-winded, although there is a really good Dr. Zoidberg joke in there that still makes me laugh. Anyway. The only reason I bring it up is because I was struck by how oddly reminiscent "Europa Report" was to "Apollo 18," and I find it fascinating to see two films with similar premises but different outcomes in terms of quality and effectiveness. That's not to say "Europa Report" is some masterpiece, because it's not, but it does enough things well so as to make me say to myself "Huh. It's like "Apollo 18" but better."

"Europa Report" is about the first manned expedition to the titular moon of Jupiter, where scientists have long speculated that there may be a chance that life exists underneath the ice of its vast, deep oceans. While the destination is of course the highlight and takes up the back half of the film, it's just as much about the journey as it's a long damn trip of some two years to just get there, and a lot can happen in that time to people stuck in a tin can in space.

The film doesn't go all "Event Horizon" on us or anything, although that would have been freaking awesome, but there are enough things that happen on the voyage there so as to make the entire trip seem like a wholly bad idea. The film showcases just how unpredictably and quickly absolute disaster can happen, which often has a point-of-no-return of a couple of seconds and inches. There is no room for mistakes anywhere out in deep space, and often when a mistake happens, it means someone is going to die, which a rather horrifyingly effective sequence near the middle of the film that is hinted at throughout the beginning (as the film is told slightly out of chronological order) illustrates. It really puts the viewer on pins and needles any time anybody does pretty much anything.

 Lots of this expression going on here.

This tension carries over to when they land on the planet where things go pear-shaped almost immediately, and every single decision they make turns into a life-or-death situation. As the "or death" part of that gets more and more accurate as the film progresses, there's a distinct overarching sense of doom and hopelessness that takes over the film. And that may not be comfortable watching but it's certainly effective.

From that perspective "Europa Report" is a well done work of science fiction that may be somewhat bleak, but it's an interesting, suspenseful ride while it lasts. It's paired with solid performances all around, particularly from Embeth Davidtz as the astronaut who becomes our lead, Sharlto Copley who provides the film's most dramatic and heartrending moment, and Michael Nyqvist as the slightly unhinged guy who may or may not be losing it. And while I'm sure there are plenty of gaffes in how things would work in the real world, there's enough of a sense of realism so as to make it seem legit.

It's also quite pretty on occasion.

Where the issue, and it's the only big issue, in "Europa Report" comes into play is when we talk about how it was filmed and put together. Now, I was not expecting this, but to my surprise it turns out that this is a found-footage movie. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, since I've found the success rate of that genre to be shaky at best. I'd have to say that out of the found-footage movies I have seen, "Europa Report" is an example of a decently put together one, but that's not saying a whole heck of a lot, and it's certainly not as good as the best the genre has to offer.

At least this made some sense in terms of the "How are we seeing this?" question goes, as the footage is transmitted back to Earth. And at least there's really no hand-held cameras to speak of, which means that at least it's not headache inducing or incomprehensible. But the question remains as to why this is a found-footage movie in the first place. It doesn't add anything to the film. Shooting it like a normal film would have been just as effective, if not more so because then it would have eliminated the need for the other aspect that wasn't very effective: The talking heads.

Interspersed throughout the film, functioning as our narrators so to speak, are interviews with some of the people who had been overseeing the mission from Earth. This makes "Europa Report" come across more like a program on the History Channel or something, which tends to underplay the drama and, instead of having the clearly intended effect of grounding it in reality as if we were watching a documentary, serves to only shatter the fourth wall and break up the flow. It doesn't help that all they really do is pop up and explain to us what we just saw and already know, which makes them not only annoying but useless as well.

Helmet-cam also means we get freaking clinical with a number of the crew's faces.

In all honesty that's the only real issue with the film. Granted, "The way it's put together" is a fairly big issue, but everything else is pretty solid. It's a good science fiction story. It's just a shame that it couldn't have been filmed like a traditional movie instead of trying to use a gimmick that really comes across as pointless and somewhat distracting.

Check out the trailer.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Europa Report" is worth a look if you like sci-fi, but if you really hate the found footage genre, it's probably not going to be to your liking. At the very least it's not going to win over any converts. Worth a look for some pretty memorable and tense scenes, but overall it feels like it could have been put together more efficiently.