ELYSIUM

(Neill Blomkamp, 2013)

I love when a movie starts with a low burble of 1980s synthesiser. Which is exactly how Neill Blomkamp's Elysium begins.
After that, it dips a little. Sun-hazy scenes of children in a dystopian future Los Angeles and rapid world-building clutter the first act, establishing a 2154 world where the rich (mainly white) citizens of Earth have fled to Elysium, an orbiting "habitat" on a space station where there is constant sunshine, no sickness and none of the nasty Latinos who fill the overpopulated slums of Earth. That is where we find Max (Matt Damon) one of the children from those sun-hazy scenes. An ex-con now working in a factory, an industrial accident leaves him with only days to live, and Elysium and its miraculous machines becomes his only hope. To get there he undergoes surgery fusing him with an exoskeleton, giving him strength the equal of the droids patrolling both worlds as sentinels. But Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and the vicious Kruger (Sharlto Copley) stand in his way, and the need to get the terminally ill daughter of his old friend Frey (Alice Braga) to Elysium doesn't make it any easier.
The allegory here is perhaps too obvious and too simple, but at least Blomkamp is trying to say something, at least his film has something on its mind beyond its explosions and weak, predictable character arcs. Because for all that it is thematically a little trite, its major flaw is the cheesiness of much of its drama, from the awkward characterisation of players like Wagner Moura's frequently unintelligible gang boss Spider, to the dull, overly simplified politicking on Elysium itself involving Delacourt and William Fichtner's hollow cartoon of a spineless executive. The scenes showcasing Max's daily life recall similar scenes in other sci-fi films (last year's tepid Total Recall remake, for instance) without ever transcending them.
But Blomkamp is at home with action. He understands how it works and how to work it. He can make an action sequence really sting, and once the story proper gets underway here and Max is in motion, the film takes on its own momentum which renders some of the other complaints largely irrelevant. Blomkamp shoots action scenes which are coherent (a rarity in modern spectacle filmmaking), visceral and thrillingly nasty. Violence in his world has consequences. People get hurt, faces get pulped. But he is able to combine that brutality with a gee-whiz quality, indulging in cool shots and relishing the process of the fights he is depicting. Max is an amateur throughout, a little out of his depth even when augmented, which helps lend a pleasing edge of suspense to the climactic face-off with Kruger. Their fighting styles are individual too; Max doesn't really know what he is doing even as he grows more confident in his new strength, whereas Kruger is a specialist and perhaps overconfident as a result.
That they have an (immensely satisfying) final showdown indicates how well Blomkamp understands the needs of the action genre.
Damon is a massive boon to a film like this; an undoubted movie star, he combines a charismatic watchability with an everyman quality, and he has the acting chops to pull off Max's desperation and his slow journey towards acceptance of what must happen. Copley (as usual?) chews scenery throughout, but he does offer a scary sense of unpredictable threat which contributes to the tension of the last act. Jodie Foster, on the other hand, makes a series of terrible decisions, speaking in a weird accent, opting for oddly inappropriate or campy line-readings which rob her pivotal scene of much of its intended impact. Alice Braga is typecast here as the spunky-yet-soulful Latin spitfire we've seen her play many times before.
The technical credits are all strong, with the production design particularly inventive; underlining the allegory, this is a future-world that looks very much like now, and the differences between Earth tech (worn down, gritty, industrial) and Elysium tech (slick, seamless, digital) only add to the palpable textures of Blomkamp's film. That helps when it comes to the body horror element of the plot, which, as in his previous film, the similarly interesting but flawed District 9, is one of the strongest passages here.

THE LONE RANGER

(Gore Verbinski, 2013)

An insanely ambitious, barking mad western adventure epic, it feels somehow miraculous that The Lone Ranger exists at all. It's commercial underperformance only underlines this - what studio would be mad enough to spend (a reputed) $200 million on a film in a genre which is always a box office gamble based upon a character who has largely faded from the pop culture memory?
But exist it does, and, though it is probably an hour longer than it has any right to be, it might actually be the most roundly entertaining of this summer's blockbuster movies.
It takes the theme park approach to the Western genre, bringing the audience on a tour through stock situations. So we have a bank robbery, a train holdup, cavalry versus indians, an ambush in a mountain pass, heroes buried up to their necks in the sand, the travelling construction of a raildoad by Chinese workers, an explosion in a silver mine, a whorehouse...
The story serves as an origin: John Reed (Armie Hammer, likeable throughout) travels back to his childhood home in the West after years studying law on the East coast. There the murder of his brother, legendary lawman Dan Reed (James Badge Dale) opens up a complex conspiracy involving the railroad, silver deposits, the exploitation of the Comanche and a vicious psychotic cannibal killer Butch (William Fichtner). Reed winds up believed dead and wearing a mask alongside the possibly insane Comanche Tonto (Johnny Depp).
The plot is unnecessarily convoluted, with too many characters and too many pointless episodes (Helena Bonham Carter as a Madame is entirely superfluous as is Barry Pepper and his Cavalry detachment) but that adds to the epic, frenzied feel. An issue is the way it all has to rise to an action crescendo every fifteen minutes or so. Luckily Verbinski has honed his abilities in that department over three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and some of the action set-pieces here are absolutely inspired, most obviously the climactic twin-train sequence, which nods to Buster Keaton in its mix of slapstick and complex action choreography.
That is only one of dozens of references, mostly to classic Westerns, with obvious homages to Sergio Leone and John Ford amongst them. This reflects one of the film's greatest strengths; in this season of big dumb movies with no ideas, it actually has a theme. It is about how history is written by the victors, no matter what the truth may be ("Print the legend") and also to some extent about the power of myth. The way it integrates this within it's packed narrative - the whole thing narrated by an aged Tonto (in what looks like a Little Big Man reference) to a young boy at a San Francisco fair in 1933 - is often problematic, but its ambition and the extent to which it succeeds is admirable.
Also likeable is its comedy; subtler and wittier than the Pirates films, it uses Depp's superb deadpan in contrast to the insanity often surrounding him, and scores some laughs through ironic takes on classic or corny old tropes.
It looks absolutely beautiful; cinematographer Bojan Bazelli and Verbinski stage and shoot some scenes which appear generically familiar with wit, invention and imagination, and of course that familiarity fades as the true sense of delirious fun here is revealed. It rollicks along, its humour and action balanced by some interesting darker elements, it's occasionally dull script enlivened by the direction, design and strong cast.