Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment has selected Dec. 17 as the DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack (with
UltraViolet) rollout date for South African-born filmmaker Neill Blomkamp’s
latest political allegory dressed up as a sci-fi thriller, Elysium.
The ARR is 130 days and
the domestic box office take was $91.9 million.
You can layer anything
that comes to mind over the components of Blomkamp’s futuristic tale — South
Africa as the space station Elysium would be one of them, with the suffering in
Los Angeles (which sure looks a lot like present day Detroit, only with hoards
of homeless people) representing the rest of Africa.
You could also argue that
the paradise of Elysium could be a nice stand in for modern day China’s elite
Orwellian-based ruling class, with the dregs of Los Angeles representing the
rest of the population of the country.
Indeed, Matt Damon’s gig on the assembly line at the Armadyne Corp would
fill in nicely for some poor sick Chinese laborer toiling away at some remote
Apple factory — call in sick and we have nine other schmucks ready to take your
spot.
Elysium is the ultimate
gated community, occupied by limousine royalists and run by Jodie Foster as Secretary
of Defense Jessica Delacourt — she does an excellent job of channeling a Nurse
Ratchet persona squared. Matt Damon,
who swore off politics after Promised Land tanked last Christmas,
is ready to heroically storm the barricades, but doesn’t have a clue as to how
to solve the underlying problems of an over-populated and under-productive Earth
(Los Angeles; Africa, etc.). 
An eye-rolling ending,
punctuated by the premise of free health care for all, is how Blomkamp ends Elysium
… if only it were that simple. You
fully expect the closing credits to be accompanied by a full cast rendition of
“Kumbaya.”
The film, as with
Blomkamp’s District 9, works just fine as an action/thriller, especially
if you are able to set aside the beat-you-over-the-head allegory elements. Despite the film’s political bent, Sony
Pictures Home Entertainment will do just fine with its home entertainment
launch on Dec. 17.
Bonus features include a
pair of featurettes — “Collaboration: Crafting the Performances in Elysium” and
“Engineering Utopia: Creating a Society in the Sky.” Exclusive to the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack are
an extended scene, the multi-part “The Journey to Elysium” and the featurette
“Visions of 2154.”
To download this week's
complete edition of the DVD and Blu-ray Release Report: DVD & Blu-ray Release Report
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