“No…Not Without Incident.” (reviewed by OG)

The future. The city (pick a city…any city) is now ruled by a single theocratic dictator named FATHER (Big Brother was busy, apparently). There is no war. No murder. Everyone takes a drug called Prozium, which disables his or her ability to feel. To express sorrow, joy, anger, etc. This is, as Father has decreed, the root of all evil. Anyone who strays from their dosage or indulges in art, poetry, or self-_expression is labeled a “sense offender”, incarcerated, and then incinerated. The first line of offense for the establishment is an elite group of warriors called the “Cleric”, who are trained in Gun Kata, a weapons-fighting style that allows for a mixture of martial arts and gunfire tactics designed to allow a single man to kill everyone in a room in a span of 10 seconds without suffering a scratch. Lovers of free-_expression have dumped the drug and headed underground, where they are hunted and killed by the Cleric and the new world order. Is this a piece of fiction, or the future of Bush’s new Homeland Security Bill? We may not know that yet, but one thing’s for sure. When the most lethal member of the Cleric (played by Christian Bale), who sees his own wife incinerated for “sense” crimes (and whose children also live anesthetized), accidentally skips a dose and starts to feel…well, that’s when the shit gets interesting.

I saw this one a few hours after catching Leonard Maltin’s Hot or Not review, where he denounced the film as derivative garbage. After having watched it, I have come to the fully contemplated conclusion that Leonard Maltin is a clueless cock HEAD. Does the film borrow from such works as Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984? Yes…as much as Saving Private Ryan borrows from Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, and every other war film in existence. It’s a continuation of a THEME, which is to be found in any critically applauded film. You may as well call GLADIATOR derivative because it steals directly from SPARTACUS. EQUILIBRIUM follows the basic pattern of “Big Bro is watching us” paranoid thought, but it does what I definitely hoped it would do, and that is to present the theme in a new light, with a new environment surrounding the ideas encased in its premise. In this case, the decorations include pure mood, pure story/narrative, and an amazing visual attack.

Bale’s Cleric is an initial Nazi poster boy, going so far as to kill his own partner (played by Sean Bean, who seems to love death scenes) for reading Yeats. Even his new partner (played expertly by Taye Diggs), a hard ass in his own right, wishes to be just as uncompromising as his superior. His son is equally as loyal to the new “Reich”, and chastises his little sister for fiddling with her cereal, going so far as to report a fellow child for crying in the playground. But when Bale accidentally breaks his dosage of Prozium and starts to experience raw human emotion (having never felt it before in his life), the film kicks into high gear and allows the audience to feel the awakening along with him. It starts off small, with a simple desk re-arrangement, and the desire to take off his gloves and feel the rail on a flight of stairs. It’s these small moments that director Kurt Wimmer indulges us in, bathing the usually dark setting in light colors whenever Bale decides to take in a new emotion. This becomes a gradual process, and many an audience member will probably start getting pissed off at the fact that EQ is NOT an all-out shoot-em-up flick. And this IS the case, folks. Do NOT expect 2 hours of gunblasts, explosions, and mayhem. This is a thinking man’s sci-fi flick, and it delivers the story with grace, patience, and respect.

That having been said, let me just say that the action sequences in this film are unlike ANYTHING I have ever seen on film. When Bale pulls out his guns and starts blasting, the geometric complexity and accuracy of his movements sent the crowd into hysterics. Every geek in the theater was ready to just whip it out and jack it after the first batch of baddies met their demise at the hands of the Cleric (not me of course…just the geeks…buncha fucking weirdos, if you ask me). If the Matrix introduced a whole new visual sense of action to Cinema, EQ introduces a whole new brand of ACTION. This hyper kinetic mayhem stylized to a surgical perfection, and it never misses a beat or overstays its welcome. In other words, this shit WILL blow you away. If you’re not impressed, then go ahead and kill yourself, cause you’re a ZOMBIE, and a single bite from your dumb ass could infect the world.

So there you go. One of the best sci-fi films in the last few years has popped up out of nowhere, and I suggest you go catch it ASAP. One can only hope that future films are influenced by a single iota of what EQ has to deliver, on both a visual and narrative level.

For now, I have been satiated. I can rest for a bit…and then it’s on to THE TWO TOWERS.

Enjoy.

(P.S.: For you animal lovers out there, there IS a particularly brutal scene where a kennel full of dogs is exterminated. It is not graphic, and the slaying are implied, but I found myself flinching just as much as Bale’s character did at the sound of every gunshot. However, the puppy that Bale manages to save gets his ultimate revenge when over a dozen fascist soldiers are massacred in his name. God bless America)

(12.9.02)