Alice Braga plays Max's childhood friend Frey with whom Max meets up again when he's an adult. He was also quite sarcastic and funny when he was dealing with the droids in the earlier part of the film but we didn't see this side of him at all after that. He's just a no nonsense guy who is thrown into a difficult situation. His role and the writing of his character isn't anything too special or memorable but he does what he can with it. Matt Damon is decent as the film's protagonist Max who is an ex-con now working on assembling the droids which keep order on the now overpopulated Earth. The set and production designers truly did a great job with the locations. The rich on the other hand have every resource available to them in their own little paradise in space. Everything's in disrepair and in decline. You could really buy it that Earth could look like this with many decades of neglect and poverty. The Earth of the film looks very gritty, believable and lived-in and the space station Elysium has this very sterile and futuristic look to it.

The CGI effects are excellent and blend in well with the environment.

Visually the film is quite stunning and it has some great cinematography when it comes to the larger shots. Unfortunately his second feature doesn't quite match up with the greatness that was District 9. After director Neill Blomkamp's fantastic debut film District 9 I was understandably eager to see his new sci-fi film Elysium.

Shades of elysium vr