Equilibrium (2002)

Tagline: In a future where freedom is outlawed outlaws will become heroes.

Curiosity: I’ve been meaning to check Equilibrium out ever since I heard about it in high school. Seven years later, I finally got around to it.

Plot: In an Orwellian future, society has eradicated all ills like war and murder by essentially banning emotions. The populace is kept on mood-controlling drugs and anything that could inspire emotion – namely art in any form – is contraband. A task force called the Grammaton Clerics makes sure all art is destroyed. One such cleric, John Preston (Christian Bale) becomes sympathetic to the underground resistance to this fascist regime. This is good for the rebels, as clerics are trained in Gun Kata, a fighting style that allows practitioners to maximize hitting their targets, and minimize being hit, through geometric statistics.

Thoughts: While it was heavily compared to The Matrix at the time of its release, Equilibrium cops more from 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 by combining Big Brother with the state-ordered destruction of books, among other forms of expression. This dystopian hodgepodge comes out feeling a little underwhelming. When you steal from such seminal works, you should be prepared to pale in comparison.

As for the Matrix comparison, that really only sticks thanks to the Gun Kata angle. It’s sort of like Equilibrium’s version of bullet time, only way more low tech. It consists of Bale swinging his arms every which way and occasionally doing a flip. It honestly looks really dumb. The style is meant to be based on probability over actual aiming, and it looks exactly like that. Bale just keeps squeezing the trigger over and over with a minimum of movement, but that just makes the bad guys’ inability to hit him that much more unbelievable. Dude is standing right there! What is this, Rambo III? All you get is one guy spinning around and grimacing.

While the film has a pretty solid cast – Sean Bean delivers an amazing cameo early on – the players can’t prop up the flimsy film for long. Budget constraints ensure that the Gun Kata bits look silly – especially when two clerics go up against each other. The script ensures that everything else looks silly too. I’d rather just read George Orwell.

Reflection: In the opening scene, Bale burns the Mona Lisa. It’s a ridiculous Emmerich-type move, and they don’t even get the painting’s proportions right. Faux pasta!