lorddusty
Apr 2002
Crazy Theatre Seal
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Equilibrium Review:
Ok, finally got the chance to see this film, and I must say it is probably the best action film I have seen all year, and I would highly encourage anyone to go see it at the theatres if they can, however before you go see this movie, I recommend reading Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World, not just because the book is a literary masterpiece about post-modern society, but because Equilibrium makes so many unfulfilled allusions to it that the movie is practically reliant on the book as a precursor.
Plot:
Set after World War III in the not to distant future, a new society is built based on drug-reliance and the abolishment of feeling and humanity through uniformity and mind control. It is in this setting that Equilibrium asks us the unfathomable question: How great a price would you pay for freedom?
John Preston (Christian Bale) is a Grammaton Cleric (highly trained law officer) fighting for a Hitler-esc dictator known as the "Father." The movie starts off as John finds out his partner has submitted to human feeling, and he kills his partner as he’s reading Yeats’s Cloths of Heaven. After being recognized for this callous behavior he is given the task if ridding the society of "The Underground," a rogue society devoted to Art and the preservation of human feeling. However, John becomes obsessed with the human feelings inherent in Beethoven and Mona Lisa, and he begins his shift to the underground. John stops using the opiate drug Prozium and is able to see the need for change in his society. He begins to secretly work for The Underground in a plan to assassinate Father and destroy the Prozium production plants. However, John’s actions have not gone unnoticed and his partner Brandt (Taye Diggs) is out to expose him to the man in an effort to gain power.
My Take:
Taken literally this is just another sci-fi futuristic shoot em up. The action sequences are intense, eclipsing those found in the Matrix. Although Jet Li would have been able to make John’s martial arts moves much more realistic, Christian Bale has the whole “speech” thing down, which makes him the obvious choice. Acting was nothing extraordinary, and the scenes all too CGI, but still through all it’s downfalls the movie shined for me.
Now taken critically in conjunction with the ideas that BNW brings presents, you’ll get a completely different movie. Mass-production leading to inhumanity and eventual loss of emotion and our own society’s adoption of these ideas becomes the point. It’s a shame that the movie focused on wanton violence instead of developing characters and the ideas it tries to present. Maybe because I’ve already studied BNW this movie was a jewel for me, but in preaching to the choir what else can you expect?
PS: the poster for this movie is awesome, check it out here.
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Equilibrium
12-11-2002 07:59 AM
