District 9<\/a>” several years ago. The South African born\/raised former visual effects artist takes his image imagination and successfully turns it into interesting, never-been-told tales.<\/p>\nIn this outing, Earth’s population of the future is divided into two camps – the wealthy, who have unlimited state of the art health care, and live in an Eden-like space colony, and everybody else, dying in poverty and squalor on shabby old earth. \u00a0Hmm, that sounds more like a realty show!<\/p>\n
Damon’s character dreamed as a child of going to the space outpost, Elysium, and an industrial work accident made it mission critical for him – unless the got to the station within five days, crawled into one of their “cure-all machines”, he would be toast.<\/p>\n
His mission complicated by the appearance of a former love interest, whose only child is dying from leukemia, Damon hooks up with a former criminal co-hort, offers to perform “any task” in return for two tickets to paradise.<\/p>\n
The film offers non-stop action, stunning effects and visualizations of the future colony, with a dose of reality thrown in as future Los Angeles is portrayed by present day Mexico City. The always lovely and talented Jody Foster turns in a great performance as a government official on the space outpost.<\/p>\n
I liked it. \u00a0For a couple of reasons. \u00a0I like almost any movie that’s not a remake or sequel, and they are hard to find these days; and I like Blomkamp’s allegories (in my opinion) of life in South Africa pre and post apartheid, having visited in both periods. The slums of (future) Los Angeles bear a striking resemblance to the townships of Joburg.<\/p>\n
Here’s the official trailer. \u00a0Catch the flick in IMAX if you are able.<\/p>\n