Earth has been ravaged by disease, pollution, and overpopulation. The wealthy have abandoned ship and now live on a space station called Elysium, which can be seen in the clouds by those who have no hope of living there. Max (Matt Damon) has grown up watching Elysium from his rundown, L.A. neighborhood (which is only slightly more rundown that the Watts I remember from the mid-1960's).
Max is an allegedly reformed car thief who is working in a grueling factory job. Despite his living conditions, he is trying to keep things together in a society openly rigged against the poor.
It's not easy. Amid a gritty cityscape populated by cluttered streets and dirty hospitals, a robot police force makes arrests indiscriminately, with no apparent restraints on brutality. Sentencing is automated, administered by a droid, and there are no appeals. When he gets a radiation exposure that is lethal he agrees to a rogue plan to invade Elysium and make all the citizens of Earth eligible for the improbably good health care they enjoy in paradise. There are a lot of things that require a suspense of reality here, but there are many things that are only slightly more extreme than the Republican view of how America should be.
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