Equilibrium

Home
Smell the Movies
Smell the TV

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2002
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Kurt Wimmer
Genre:	Paranoid, dystopian sci-fi action
Starring:	Christian Bale, Sean Bean, Taye Diggs
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238380/
Tagline:	In a future where freedom is outlawed outlaws will become heroes.
Favourite line:	"In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel."

Christian Bale is in good form, as ever, in this slightly silly dystopian future sci-fi actioner.
He's John Preston, a Grammaton Cleric, a fascist force used to quell anyone committing a 'sense crime' - i.e., anyone feeling emotion due to not taking their daily 'interval' of Prozium, a drug that blunts all sense of feeling. The regime was introduced in the aftermath of the Third World War when it was decided that mankind could not survive a fourth and that as a result, the only way to ensure the continued survival of the species was to block the very thing that caused wars in the first place - hate.
The name of the drug is clearly a side-swipe at the proliferation of Prozac, and other such SSRI's that are in common use these days. Inevitably, Bale escapes the shackles of his Prozium induced fugue and comes up against the very force for which he once fought so vehemently.

Good performances, some entertainingly daft action sequences (the gun fights have to be seen to be believed), this was enjoyable enough, and would have got an extra mark but for the unnecessary Matrix-lite design choices made by the movie makers, which seemed pointless as they only detracted as the viewer was left wondering "Why do they all dress like Neo?"
Oh, and the fact that the Tom Baker Doctor Who story The Sunmakers has a near identical plot!