Whoa, shit... I actually really enjoyed this. Very surprised that it was much better than I expected. Great sci-fi-gasm with a pretty hard R-rating. 8/10 or 4/5 from me. Only loses points for too much godd@mn shaky-cam. Shit gets far too shaky and there's not even the alternate benefit of having longer shots without cuts. Still cuts rapidly WITH shaky cam. Not a good combination. But, having said that, the rest of it was so entertaining, that I still extremely enjoyed it. I will gladly support sci-fi/action like this.
I picked up the bluray for this the other day. I plan to watch it again soon, too. I did learn that the director did a lot of handheld shaky cam on Earth (as opposed to Elysium) just as a way to visually distinguish the two. Still think he might have gone overboard at times, but that at least makes sense.
Effects, great. Future tech, great. Overall plot, pretty good, though heavy on the "you'd look at illegals differently if you were in their place" message. Very enjoyable overall, but a lot of people seemed to find the graphic violence over the top. You saw exactly what a magnetically-accelerated round would do to the human body. You saw exactly what a grenade to the face does. The violence in here makes what happened to Murphy in RoboCop look tame.
Aside from the shaky cam the cinematography was good. The underlying "we all have a purpose" idea was maybe a little heavy as well, but the ending did a good job of restating it well. It was worth the money.
Originally posted by Ascendancyi watched the film a 2nd time recently and really enjoyed it. Violence like this should upset people because to me it illustrates just how far the top 1% will go to preserve their wealth and way of life. This film is extremely subversive. In that sense I think the violence was not only extremely necessary, but it actually helps make the film great.. an uncompromising vision. And it's not like the violence is really thick and fast. It's just there occasionally as a reminder.
Very enjoyable overall, but a lot of people seemed to find the graphic violence over the top. You saw exactly what a magnetically-accelerated round would do to the human body. You saw exactly what a grenade to the face does. The violence in here makes what happened to Murphy in RoboCop look tame.