Movie: Equilibrium

Year of Release: 2002

Genre: Sci-fi, Action-Thriller

Chances are that this is the first time you’ve heard of this film. It was released a couple years after The Matrix, and I’ve heard many people call it a copycat. However, I think you’ll find that the only similarities between this Sci-Fi and Matrix is that they both have guns, trench coats, and wild fighting. I don’t think it’s a rip-off at all. In fact, Equilibrium sets itself apart very clearly, and has a lot to offer that Matrix never had.

Equilibrium was partly an attempt to combine aspects of different film genres. Firstly though, it is a Sci-Fi. According the film, after the Third World War, mankind began to realize that there was one thing that caused conflict. This thing was ‘Feeling’.

Christian Bale plays the part of the protagonist, John Preston, who is the top Grammaton Cleric. The Clerics are an organization that have outlawed Feeling. In fact, most the entire populace takes an injection, or ‘dose’ of Prozium every day to suppress extreme highs and lows in emotion. People have been taking the dose their whole lives. What if you were one of these people? What if, one day, you missed a dose? This is exactly what happens to Preston. What’s more, now that he’s felt, he wants to stop taking the dose altogether. For much of the story his Cleric partner(Taye Diggs) is watching him, and becomes more and more suspicious.

The concept of the Cleric is important because they’re like the elite officers. Their job is to enforce the “no-feeling” rules. John Preston is very specialized in this area because it seems he can sense what people are feeling. This adds a very cool element to the film’s drama. At one part, when a citizen denies being off the dose, Preston grabs him and says, “Then how come you’re so scared of me?”

This movie received a lot of criticism due to the fact that it was released in the same year as another Sci-Fi, called Minority Report, which people say was a much better and more intriguing film. Granted, Minority Report is a brilliant movie, but Minority Report and Equilibrium are targeted toward two, for the most part, very different audiences. Though the first may boast a much more complex plot, Equilibrium is one of the best crosses that, in a way, combines the drama in Minority Report with fighting scenes reminiscent of The Matrix.

Another thing that people complained about was: bad acting? Many people claimed that the lack of emotions in the plot made for actors who were unable to have character. False. Let me give an example. Over the course of the story Christian Bale portrays every single major emotion. When he stops taking the dose he’s afraid he’ll be discovered. When he hears music it’s so beautiful to him he that cries. When he arrests a woman for being off the dose and she’s scheduled for combustion (or, she’s gonna be burned alive) he feels regret and is torn because he likes her but doesn’t know what to do with these feelings. Near the end, he gets extremely angry, to the point where he can no longer feel anything. He then confronts his enemies in an extremely cool finale, with a face-off action sequence that has to be seen to be believed.

You’ll follow the protagonist as he experiences emotion for the first time, which is very interesting and philosophical. But on top of that, you get some amazing action, featuring a martial art called Gun Kata, which was created specifically for the film. The style is very unique and original, and though it’s debatable whether the action is better than in The Matrix, it sure is much more energetic and adrenaline rushing.

Overall, this movie was great then and still is. The acting, action and drama have barely aged from the day this was released. If you like a different, interesting story and adrenaline-rushing action, you very well should, at the very least, rent this movie.

80% Great