Equilibrium

2002
Dir: Kurt Wimmer

 
The Matrix, Brazil, Minority Report, 1984; name any dystopian Sci-Fi and you will have nailed a part of Equilibrium. The problem is though, all of these films are not only better than Kurt Wimmer’s flick, they are in a whole other galaxy.

In the future city-state of Libria (what genius came up with that name, eh? You’ll be calling something Unobtanium next), in the aftermath of war, a new totalitarian regime has emerged, which has identified human emotion as the problem, abolishing it via a drug called Prozium. Grammaton Clerics are the spearhead of Libria’s new law enforcement, but one of their rank, John Preston, following the death of his partner and an encounter with an ‘emotional’ woman, begins to question the validity of this new world.

So far, so George Orwell, right?

Equilibrium isn’t the most original piece of cinema, that’s for certain, injecting this 1984 world with action sequences so similar to The Matrix that you half expect to see Christian Bale entering ‘Bullet Time’ at any second. It’s just lazy old Hollywood, perfectly happy to churn out something we’ve seen a million times before. Instead of Big Brother, we get Sean Pertwee’s “Father”; instead of O’Brien, we are given Taye Diggs’ irritating Brandt; and instead of the aforementioned Bullet Time, we are forced to buy into the frankly ridiculous gun kata. At times Equilibrium feels like a computer game, and that’s probably where it should have ended up, with its flimsy plot, irrelevant ‘shoot ‘em up’ action scenes, wooden dialogue, in reality quite cheap looking costumes (what’s with all the motorcycle helmets?) and visuals, and robotically narrating villain. I seriously thought I was playing the old Red Faction games.

In terms of actors, Wimmer’s film would have been absolutely perfect for a terrible actor with an inability to express emotion. It worked brilliantly for Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. But instead we get a completely wasted Christian Bale, who, while great at minimalising his expressions, can never be said to lack emotion. But at least the emergence of his emotions over the course of the story is explained; with certain other characters it just seems like bad acting. Taye Diggs for example, may be the smuggest, nastiest emotionless man of all time. If it was implied that basically everyone was just pretending to take the drug, then it should have been explored further. Diggs’ Brandt, along with Angus Macfadyen’s DuPont are what pass for antagonists in Equilibrium, but come across about as threatening as Gandhi frolicking in a field of lambs on a lovely summer’s day in Heaven. Just rubbish. Your bleedin’ grandma could wipe the floor with these pansies. But at least they are not wasted like poor Emily Watson, who does nothing other than sit and look sad for the small percentage of time she is actually on screen. Perhaps if they’d spent less time on crappy video game shootouts and more time building the relationship between Watson’s Mary and Bale’s John, then there would have been at least some substance to this film.

But they don’t, and as a result, Equilibrium is left as a mess of a picture; a mutant sporting the various limbs of other, better ideas in the wrong places, and a joystick firmly between its legs. You’ll probably feel emotionally dead after this one too.

** / *****

Don't fuck with Batemen