Elysium

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! 
Max (Matt Damon) is a convicted criminal living on the soiled planet of Earth, more than one hundred years in the future. He is poor. Los Angeles looks like a third world country. All the rich have fled the country, living in a pristine space station above the earth, where disease doesn't exist while everyone on Earth is dying.
Max has troubles of his own, with the police on his back including a misunderstanding which leads to a visit with his parole officer who is a robot. When the robot notices a change in his behavior, Max is offered drugs, no questions asked.
But then after an accident in his work, his body is filled with a toxic amount of radiation, which means that he will die in only a few days. He is determined to go to Elysium and be cured. This is extremely dangerous as the Secretary of State Delacourt (the icy Jodie Foster) will destroy the citizens of Earth without bias. She even has a rouge agent on Earth, Kruger (Shalto Copley).
Max is selfish, risking much just so he can get cured, killing many on both sides, including the super-rich boss of Max, Carlyle (William Fitchner) who doesn't even want a citizen of Earth to breathe on him. He feels for his old sweetheart Frey's (pronounced Fray) daughter who is nearly dying from leukemia even after she (Alice Braga) risks her life to save him, he can't be bothered to return the favor. Even Spider (Wagner Moura) wants to do something good with the information Max obtains to save himself but Max, at first only thinks of himself. I was thinking the whole time, please be like Rick from Casablanca and put everyone else above yourself. Finally, after a nasty battle (the film, overall contained too much unnecessary violence), Max, realizing that getting the code (which will do many things, Delacourt had Carlyle create it so she could have a coup and become president) out of his head will cause more damage than anticipated, he lets Spider save humanity. Everyone is now a citizen of Elysium. Eventually disease, illness and injury will be no more.
I was happy with this ending, Max sacrificing himself to save everyone else, including the young Matilda who may or may not be his daughter. The issue of her father is never brought up and at least in my mind, I believe it to be Max though I might be alone in this.
The film deals with many interesting issues, such as what will become of the Earth when the rich leave it behind? Will illness and disease run rampant while the rich could care less about the underprivileged? I hope not. I also found it interesting that the poor on Earth were speaking Spanish while the rich on Elysium were speaking French, what does this say?
Overall, the violence was excessive but what bothered me more is the the bad guy, Kruger giving the finger to those as they are destroyed, an even bigger slap in the face. Still, there are many twists and turns. Everyone dies, from Delacourt to Kruger and I wasn't sorry to see them go. I was also fine with Max dying knowing that so many will be saved. This film should be a warning to all, so the future doesn't descend into a world of crime and where human life is nothing. The citizens of Earth aren't important; they are replaceable. They can die so those on Elysium will continue to function as they have for decades, in blissful ignorance. That is a problem, though it exists currently. That also needs to change. Maybe this film will help with that. Grade: A-