'Elysium' Review: Matt Damon & Jodie Foster Film Falls Flat [TRAILER]
Matt Damon's latest film, Elysium, is coming to theaters but critics are not impressed with his performance or the action.
"For a 99 percenter movie, then, Elysium is kind of a head-scratcher. It throws away its best opportunity for drama," New York Post wrote in its Monday review.
The movie is set in the year 2154, where the Earth has been polluted so immensely that the wealthy population has left to occupy Elysium, a space station in orbit. It's seemingly perfect, with swimming pools, robot servants and special machines that speedily cure cancer.
The publication also had negative words to say about the lead actor, who attempts to gain access to a spaceship to cure his disease.
"Damon is joyless, charmless and hairless as an ex-con who, after getting poisoned with radiation, decides he's got nothing left to lose by going on a trip to Elysium and asking them if they wouldn't mind giving some health care to the daughter of his childhood friend, played by Alice Braga. There is not much of a spark between those two characters, another missed opportunity," the newspaper wrote.
Other actors in the film are criticized, as well. NPR scrutinizes the performance of Jodie Foster, the defense secretary who plots to have the spaceships destroyed.
"Her accent is either English, South African or Martian - it's hard to tell, since it's different in every scene - and she moves more stiffly than the robots. With this performance, Foster joins the ranks of outspokenly liberal actors who can't manage to play their political opposites," the publication wrote.
Other critics also agree with NPR's view on the 50-year-old actress.
"As for Foster, what could have been an interesting character never really gels into anything but an oddity," Yahoo wrote in its review.
The writer and director of the film is Oscar-winner nominated Neill Blomkamp. The 33-year-old South African director is the man behind 2009's District 9.
Elysium comes to U.S. theaters on Aug. 9.
