Fight scenes set in the future involving good-looking anti-heroes in sleek androgynous attire will always recall The Matrix. And while this film has a few impressive sequences, it is no Matrix.
After World War III (coming soon to a despotic leader near you), society has decide to be more authoritarian and prohibit “feeling”. Mandatory mood stabilizing drugs are administered daily and a highly trained police force cleans the streets of sense-crime. But when officer John Preston (Christian Bale) realizes the plot is silly, he begins a messianic journey that will pit him against the man they call “Father”.
There are a few elements worthy of praise in this film. First and foremost, the gun battle sequences are excellent. The “clerics”, as the enforcement officers are called, have been trained in statistic firing patterns, so one man has the ability to outwit an entire armed squad with a combination of gunplay and tai-chi. It may not be mind boggling, but it’s certainly as entertaining as any of the fighting in Matrix Reloaded. Secondly, Equilibrium has a pretty tight cast. Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, Sean Bean, Angus MacFayden, William Fichter and Emily Watson are all competent performers.
But Equilibrium’s problems rot from within. It is the premise that is incapable of being taken seriously. Nihilistic science fiction has been done and overdone from “1984” to “Minority Report”. But it is the adjustment that “feelings’ are outlawed which brings the film to the heights of silliness. At one point, Preston finds himself protecting a cute little puppy and the big bad sense police are about to find him out. Now that is silly.
The film is dependent upon its theory that war is merely a side effect of emotion, and with emotion eradicated, peace will reign. This is, forgive me, pretty dumb. Besides the fact that authoritarian and paramilitary behavior, which is promoted in the film’s world, is a historically planted seed of war, the film offers up no definition of “feeling”. How is the pride expressed by this zombie nation not also felt?
All in all, Equilibrium is a cute idea for a student film with a nice professional touch when it comes to action. Worth watching parts of if it shows up on cable. C
