Viking Night: Equilibrium
By Bruce Hall
October 7, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
If you haven't, you will after watching Equilibrium. Screenwriter and infrequent director Kurt Wimmer brings his personally handcrafted, highly stylized dystopia to life with mixed results. Thematically, it's reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. Stylistically it takes a lot of its cues from The Matrix, which was not uncommon back in 2002. And although I can't prove it, I feel like they might have used the set designer from Gattaca. Am I trying to say that Equilibrium feels well informed by other films? Yes. Yes, I am. But I'd stop short of calling it "derivative." Equilibrium is not novel or groundbreaking, and it will remind you of movies you've seen before. But somehow it stands on its own as a moderately compelling parable, and posits the idea that our emotions must guide us, but never define us.
That sounds really heavy doesn't it? That's probably why they had a British guy do the opening voiceover, so that you know how totally freaking serious this movie is about to be. In this future, World War III, like all the best wars, was started by a powerful tyrant whose fiery disposition brought near total destruction to humanity. The survivors live in a gleaming walled city called Libria, surrounded by the ruins of what once was - a place called The Nether. There's nothing like a good old fashioned apocalypse to scare the complacency out of people, so the Librian government concluded that the cause of all humanity's problems was an overabundance of emotion. So in an effort to keep the peace, citizens are required to take a drug called Prozium to suppress their feelings.
But that's not all. Any form of artistic expression or creativity is punishable by immediate death, so afraid are these humans of their own nature. All books, paintings, music - anything that once made human society human - is outlawed. For now, I just want you to imagine the city of Libria as a society of fascist Vulcans where everyone wears Hugo Boss and for some reason, all the people in charge are British. The law is enforced by an elite police squad known as the Clerics, who can sense emotions and are trained in a particularly awesome form of kung fu called "gun-kata," which we totally do not get to see enough of in this movie. But more on that later.
The Nether is populated by those who refuse to take Prozium and choose to be creative and free and live like, you know, actual humans. The Clerics spend a lot of time there, breaking down doors, burning books and executing so-called "sense-offenders" in the name of the law. The irony of a regime seeking to eliminate war by waging one against its own people is not exactly subtle. The Tom Brady of Clerics is a man named John Preston (Christian Bale). He and his partner Partridge (Sean Bean) are at the top of their game, scouring the Nether and rooting out the Resistance, one building at a time. Preston is an uncompromising man who shows no mercy to the insurgents, and even personally presides over the destruction of the Mona Lisa.
Preston is a bad mofo, but even people without emotions carry baggage. His wife was executed as a sense offender, and his son is in Cleric school, already learning how to make murder look totally awesome. And by the way, if you're wondering how a world without emotion comes by things like "husbands," "wives," "children" and "hot sticky monkey sex," you're not alone. However it happened, Preston has a family and his superiors never let him forget that he failed to notice his wife was a lawbreaker. Eager to redeem himself, Preston doubles down on paranoia and soon sniffs out his own partner as a "sense offender." Partridge has a weakness for poetry and when confronted, willingly confesses, and gladly pays the price. Unable to feel emotion, Preston takes it in stride - until he accidentally misses his dose of Feel-B-Gone the next morning. I guess Prozium isn't very potent, because almost immediately, things start to happen.
Preston begins dreaming about his wife, feeling sorrow at her loss. He feels guilt over having to kill his partner. He feels awe and wonder at the sight of a sunrise. For the first time in his life, he understands what it is to feel - and it's addictive. He goes off the Dose and starts doing wild things like rearranging his desk at work. Impressed with the way Preston shot his own partner in the face, his bosses assign him a new sidekick, an opportunistic recruit named Brandt (Taye Diggs). Their mission is to root out the Resistance by any means necessary, and eliminate them for good. The problem is, Preston's new emotions make it hard to be ruthless, and his partner begins to seem like more than just a partner.
You want tension? Imagine a dedicated Nazi suddenly realizing what an evil douchebag he is, but still having to punch a clock and murder innocent men, women and puppies every day?
For the most part, Equilibrium is an entertaining but unremarkable story about an oppressive post apocalyptic society and the one unlikely hero who alone can bring it down - a story we've seen and read a hundred times. But does that really matter? There IS a story here, and the one thing that keeps it interesting is Christian Bale. Taye Diggs does an absolutely horrible job of acting like he has no feelings, to the point where you want to yell "bullshit" at the screen every time he speaks. But Bale turns in a finely nuanced performance, believably portraying a man who is slowly learning to emote for the first time, and coming to grips with the fact that most of his first feelings are the worst ones.
No, this is not The Fighter, for which Bale won an Academy award. But he’s easily the best thing about the movie and it’s mainly his performance that keeps the rather ordinary story compelling. The second best thing about Equilibrium is “gun-kata." If you’ve been waiting for someone to combine kung-fu with automatic weapons, your wait is over, my friend. Wimmer’s direction is unremarkable. Klaus Badelt’s score contains one memorable theme, while the remainder sounds like a thoroughly average video game soundtrack. But the only thing better than watching people get their Bruce Lee on with guns would be if they also had lightsabers.
Wow. I need a shower after what I just imagined.
This is a surprisingly engaging movie that had the misfortune of looking very much like a clone of The Matrix. It was a 700 megaton bomb at the box office, and garnered very mixed reviews at the time. But thematically, it’s got more to chew on than you’d expect, and it’s a lot of fun to see Christian Bale before he was Christian Bale, carrying a film in his back and raising all the boats around him. Equilibrium doesn’t break down any walls, but it’s got some fun moments and if you like science fiction at all, it might be one of the best high concept dystopian thrillers that you’ve never heard of.