Elysium [2013] (English): "This isn't science fiction. This is today. This is now."

In the late 21st century Earth was diseased, polluted, and vastly over-populated.

(The camera shows over-crowded, garbage-riddled, crumbling dirty cities with smoke-filled skylines)

Earth's wealthiest residents fled the planet to preserve their way of life.

(This is where the camera pans out moving away from Earth and focusing over a massive ring shaped structure orbiting the planet Earth... This is...) 

ELYSIUM...

(Supported by a star shaped spike structure that extends from a central core to the the massive ring. The inside of the massive ring made up of huge curving landscapes consisting of beautiful grassy lawns, huge white houses and sparkling water bodies. A virtual paradise compared to the hell that earth has become...)

So starts Elysium. An artificial space habitat built by the "have"s, to keep away the "have-not"s and still enjoy the best that money and technology can offer. Sterile air, open beautiful spaces, Robot servants and Medical technology that can "re-atomize" your body to heal any and every disease or injury within minutes...

And there is the Earth. The abode of the "have-not"s. Congested, over-populated, polluted. Tightly controlled by robot police, and many of the population serving the companies that enrich the "have"s who are the Elysium citizens, even the basic necessities like medical care are hard to come by. The squalor and the living conditions are clearly apparent in the garbage-riddled landscape, the crumbling buildings where people live, the over-crowded hospitals and public places...

One such have-not is Max. As a kid he has always dreamed of buying a ticket to the beautiful and fabled paradise of Elysium. Once involved in criminal activities during his early youth, now he works hard as an assembly worker in Armadyne Corp, an armaments company that provides not only the weaponry for Elysium and the police force on earth, but also designed the controlling system of Elysium itself. One day he meets with an accident while at work. Exposed to lethal dose of radiation, he has mere five days to live. And all the company gives him as compensation is a vial of capsules that would make his final days painless, and relieves him of work.

The only thing that can save him is a Med-bay - a near magical technological marvel that can re-atomize your body cells and cure any disease within minutes. The only med-bays available are on Elysium. So he approaches a smuggler named Spider, for whom he has worked before, hoping to get himself smuggled into Elysium. But Spider asks him to perform a last job for him. A job so daring and dangerous, that no person in his right mind would take it up. But Max would. He is going to die anyway. What has he got to loose? They plan to steal secret information off a high-profile Elysium citizen, and use it to buy their way into Elysium. But they land up obtaining information that's so confidential that soon they are being man-hunted for it...

The movie succeeds pretty nicely as an action flick. Though it starts off slow, it soon picks up pace and hardly ever slackens thereafter. Some slow motion action shots are quite breathtaking. Though it is not your run of the mill action flick that starts off with a bang and involves superheroes and over-the-top action sequences, it does offer some nice sci-fi action eye-candy - some pretty cool futuristic armaments, fighter droids, and some very good action sequences.

Most of the actors have acted pretty well. Which was to be expected considering that the star-cast boasts such brilliant actors like Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Alice Braga and William Fichtner.

But I liked this movie more for its concept. There are few sci-fi movies that succeed to present ideas that are possible in the foreseeable future. To make you realize with horror and trepidation that - "OMG, this may happen; it may really happen in a few years"... (One such movie I had seen before is Repo Men [2010] - another dystopian sci-fi action flick). Elysium is one such movie. If you look beyond the action and the sci-fi entertainment it offers, you may realize that what has been portrayed in the movie may very-well happen in the near future. The way our population is growing exponentially, and the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots widening every day, the day is not far when we might be thrust into just such an exploitative dystopian social structure... Maybe we already are living in such an exploitative economic system - economic slaves enriching the already rich "haves". The over-population will simply make it worse in the the near-future... 

The writer and director Neill Blomkamp says that it is a comment on the contemporary human condition. "Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future," he says, "No, no, no. This isn't science fiction. This is today. This is now."... In a way, he is right...

My Ratings: 3.5

Children of Men [2006] (English): A future without hope... Or is it?

Our life, the world we build for us, our entire system works on our hope for the future. All our plans, expectations, speculations are based from future's point of view. But what if there was no future to look forward to? With no hope for the coming tomorrow, our system would slowly but surely decay and collapse. This is the premise on which Children of Men is based.

The movie starts with the protagonist viewing a news report in a bar. Its the news of a famous celebrity who passed away. Its a kid. He was famous because he was the last kid to be born. In the future, mankind has inexplicably lost the ability to give birth. Everyone has, for some reason become sterile. And this has lead to a slow but certain Global Meltdown. As the protagonist comes out of the bar and walks away, there is a blast in the bar. It is one of the regularly carried out arsonous acts carried out by the Foogies (for Refugees) against a totalitarian government regime.

This is how the movie starts. The lead protagonist's ex-wife asks him a favour. He has to arrange for a pass to get someone out of the country. He manages to get the pass, but it turns out, he will have to personally escort that someone. Somewhere on the way, things take a turn for the worse. And while trying to cope with the sudden turn of events, he realizes that his mission is much more important and critical than it appears.

The story is based in a hypothetical future. So it certainly is a Sci-Fi movie, but without the aliens and the hi-tech stuff. And the story never really explores the why and the how of the apparently sudden sterility of the entire human race. It has some very breath-taking action. But its not your usual action flick. The direction ensures that the main theme of the movie never gets lost in the action scenes and the depiction of a future gone bad.

The movie starts with a bang but soon looses momentum for a while, as the stage is set, and the character-building happens. This initial character and story-building is nice if you don't mind the slow pace. And then suddenly the movie picks up speed. And then it hardly ever slows down...

The protagonist has to get involved in lots of action and intrigue. But he is never depicted as an action hero. He is a normal empathetic human who is doing what has to be done, like a normal human. neither are the antagonist portrayed as totally evil. The characters in this movie are more realistic shades of grey, instead of the usually shallow black and white ones that most simplified movie plots depict.

The director Alfonso Cuarón (director of the famous recent movie Gravity), pretty nicely depicts a world where hope is lost and all is shot to hell. And yet, we are shown the human side of things, where common people try to survive against all hopelessness and unnecessary violence. Even the violence is depicted with empathy, where we feel the unnecessariness of it, and the shock of its sad aftermath. And in spite of its dark dreary background, the movie gives us a message: that however dark and hopeless the future may appear, there is always hope...

On the whole its a pretty decent flick. Much better than your run of the mill Sci-fi action movies that attract so much audience. This is certainly not for everyone. But if you like sensitive movies, that add a pack of pretty slick action, pace and suspense, then you will certainly enjoy this movie the way I did.

My Ratings: 4