Matt Damon: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Max Da Costa - Elysium

You can see why Matt Damon made Elysium. Neill Blomkamp’s first film, District 9, took obvious apartheid allegory and made it into a smart, affecting cautionary tale with FPS action that got nominated for Best Picture (mental, right?).

Sadly he followed it up with a film so disappointing the director admitted he didn’t really have an idea for it beyond a big circle in the sky (because we’ve never seen that before).

And it turns out that Blomkamp can’t get a good performance out of anyone who isn’t Shartlo Copely. Damon’s working shmoe-cum-hero in Elysium spends most of the film looking deathly serious, the other panting and being seriously deathly. Damon as a regular joe is an interesting idea, and something that chimes with the likes of Good Will Hunting, but he's wholly unbelievable in the role here. In his defence, pretty much everyone else is rubbish in the movie too.