Wouldn’t you know it, a lot of people didn’t like the so-called “shakycam” employed by Elysium. And the cutting was too fast. And I’m sure there are plenty of other meaningless things people say in place of just “I was bored.” It’s totally acceptable to be bored in a movie. I still maintain that identifying the source of that boredom is crucial, and is often misidentified as springing from the actual substance of the movie.
But anyway. This is one grievance that makes little sense to me. For one thing, the action in this movie does not seem like the movie’s primary focus the way it is for a lot of other sci-fi movies. There didn’t even seem to be that many action sequences necessarily, but small intense moments of fighting every now and then, and a general feeling of unease and menace that violence could break out at any moment. That’s not the same as action. The Copley villain character in particular does a lot of sinister stuff but doesn’t actually spend of a lot of time fighting. It’s more of a slow burn type of action that builds towards a climax. When there is a lot of rapid movement and fighting, I found the camerawork to be clearer than most action movies, with longer shots that were taken at really high speeds with fast motion, maintaining a sense of frantic chaos without relying on cutting quite so quickly. Maybe my impression of it was anomalous, but even so, the main thrust of the film seems less reliant on action than on tension and suspense and drama.
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Published: Aug 15, 2013 10:00 am