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Equilibrium


Equilibrium



Equilibrium, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated and underexposed action movies of this decade. Starring Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson and Sean Bean.
Now it is not weird if you actually haven’t even heard of this movie. Because it never really got the advertisment it deserved for some reason. I think what happened was that the movie kind of had an overall look of The Matrix. And so people kind of tended to overlook it. However it’s a cult classic, and has a big following.

The story for Equilibrium:
It’s basicially a post-apocalyptic movie, as it takes place after a World War 3. Now after the world leaders that do survive the war, they take a look back at the war, they find that the reason why wars have occurred is because of human emotions. Therefore they create this drug called Prozium. Which surpresses all human emotions. Therefore people don’t get angry, and of course that means there is no war. The man responsible for introducing Prozium to the masses is a man known only as Father. Now Father appears on television screens all over the city, but never appears in person for fear of assassination. Which makes you wonder if he has a fear of being assassinated, what is wrong with this Utopia he has created.
The centre where Prozium is distributed to the people, is called Equilibrium. And thus where the movie gets it’s name.
Now in Libria, anything that causes a human to feel. Like say music, books or paintings are strictly out-lawed. And punishable by death. Now Libria does have foot soldiers in order to enforce these laws. But their number one line of defense is the grammaton cleric. Christian Bale plays as grammaton cleric, John Preston. These are elite troops that are specially trained in many forms of combat. Such as gun play and martial arts. Sean Bean plays as his partner, cleric Partridge. Although it is quickly discovered by Preston that Partridge is guilty of sense offense. Or what they call it, when someone has stopped taking Prozium and begins to start feeling. As there is is only one punishment for sense offense, Preston is forced to kill his own partner.
Preston is soon parred up with a new partner, cleric Brandt. Played by Taye Diggs. Who shares Preston’s ability to sense people who are feeling emotions, and thus very good at finding sense criminals. We also discover Emily Watson’s character, Mary. Who is soon discovered to be a sense offender as well. Preston soon finds out that she was a lover of Partridge.
The rest of the movie involes Preston finding out more Mary and Partridge. And what it might be actually like to feel.
The action element of the movie also comes in as Preston is signed to find the last remaining people of the resistance to the Libria way of life.

Grammaton clerics are trained in amny forms of combat. First and foremost being with pistols, in order to efficiently create a maximun killzone. They are also trained with swords. And there’s actually some really cool sword fighting sequences that are in this movie. So if you like sword play as well as gun play then this movie is right up your alley.

Now at first glance i think people might thend to accuse this movie of being a Matrix rip-off. Even though it came out a year before Matrix: Reloaded. However this movie also puts on some strong story. And i think the action sequences are actually very unique. I don’t think that it’s really fair to compare this movie to The Matrix at all, just because it came out during kind of the same time.

For those of you that have seen Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and really enjoy Christian Bale as Batman. Absolutely you should see this movie. This is kind of Christian Bale as Batman, before he was Batman. I think that even some of the action sequences that are in this movie, are better than Batman Begins.



7.9/10