The Elysium of the title is the luxurious and highly advanced abode of the rulers, spinning in space above Earth, where want and disease are unknown. The planet below is a fetid wasteland, a jumble of factories organized by brutal bosses with order enforced by the very robot police that hapless workers, like Max (Matt Damon) construct in very dangerous conditions.
When a factory accident leaves him with days to live unless he can get to the technology of Elysium, Max connects with the techno underworld who smuggle immigrants and are involved in an Elysian plot who can use his help. Along the way in his dangerous quest he connects with a beautiful childhood friend (Alice Braga) who has a dying daughter who also needs the magic machines of Elysium.
Blomkamp succeeds in creating the disparate worlds for his story: the beautiful almost sterile land of Elysium, and the gritty, second-hand technology of Earth. In this regard Max's exoskeleton that keeps him going, and the unexplained lack of airlocks and shields up above, are inspired. The cold calculation of the powerful in Elysium, led by an icy, amalgam-accented Jody Foster as Secretary of Defense, and the power politics there are also convincing.
Ultimately the movie stays true to its action genre, and veers off into a chase/fight between Max and the henchman Kruger (a relentless Sharlto Copley). The ultimate resolution is welcome, but seems too facile, even for a movie.
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