Equilibrium
With the state of the film critic industry (if you can call it an industry and not just a bunch of us wailing about movies,) being as it is, everyone thinks they can wade in to arguments and discussion. So when it comes to picking a movie, there is an abundance of source material to choose from. But when you’ve been intrigued by a film for a while but it comes with some pretty shockingly bad reviews, you’d be hesitant to pick it up. I through caution to the wind with this one, despite director Kurt Wimmer blasting that he wouldn’t party with critics (I’d party with us,) I’d have to agree that the professionals were wrong on this one.
Starring Christian Bale and Taye Diggs, Equilibrium revolves around a dystopian future where emotions and free thought have been restricted as the government believes they are the cause of all wars after a Third one had erupted. Clerics and soldiers police art, literature and those who fail to take their daily dose of Prozium, a drug that inhabits their emotions. However, when Preston, the leading and most loyal Cleric accidentally forgets to take one of his doses, he ends up feeling and putting the whole regime and his life into jeopardy. Soon he finds himself fighting for his own life…
The slick dystopian world here is extremely well put together. The future is extremely totalitarian and it is intriguing, unusual and highly compelling. While the world that Wimmer has created is regimented and official, the idea here is really the smarter of the two. Playing on repressed emotion and controlled visceral content of the human state, Equilibrium gives another path of dystopia that the world could unfortunately go down. Presenting us with themes of what exactly makes us human and pushing the race into a robotic vegetative state means that the movie is levelled above dumb action and becomes more complex, thoughtful and enjoyable. Although sometimes, it fails to deliver this idea a lot of the time as character unsuspectedly break into moments of emotion despite it supposedly being repressed. But this moments only falter momentarily.
And luckily, because it is a wonderful, it also dissolves into roundhouse kicks, well-choreographed fights and some explosive moments. They almost feel like a dance, they are conceptually beautiful and stunning to watch, bouncing from fight to fight. Watching Bale and Diggs battle through intense moments, shoot outs and belligerent Kung-Fu make it insanely gorgeous and exciting to watch. It’s this combination to that really works well for the film, between aesthetics and themes that make it an intense film. (And some of the visuals is stunning.)
I agree it borrows stuff from other movies and concepts, at times it is very Gilliam and V for Vendetta, but Equilibrium holds it own. Whether that is because Christian Bale is one of the finest actors to level insanity, emotions and stoicism and layer his characters or whether the ideas really do exceed the execution, Wimmer’s feast here is still a great effort and a wonderful science fiction piece to dabble in.