I’m a sucker for futuristic action films. Anything along the lines of Chronicles of Riddick, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Star Trek and more is all entertaining by me. You name it, I’ll watch it. The question you have to ask is whether or not I’d watch the film again, because if a film doesn’t have any lasting value then it really isn’t all that great.
A few years ago I watched a movie called Equilibrium. I had never heard of it but my roommate told me it was this futuristic action movie, kind of like The Matrix, that starred Christian Bale. I immediately grabbed the DVD from him and sat down to watch it. 107 min later I thanked him for introducing me to such a great and intriguing film. Fast forward six years and I now have in my possession the blu ray version of the same film. Again, I sat down, watched the film and said to myself, this is a rare type of film. Not only is it very action oriented but it poses deep and insightful questions as to the way our society thinks and how far it may go in the wake of a catastrophic event, say WWIII. It dives into the importance of human emotion and goes far beyond what I thought a film of this caliber would normally go.
Here’s the story: In the wake of World War III, a new city is born in order to protect the citizens and rid the world of violence. To do this, a fascist government is established and requires a drug called Prozium to be taken by all its citizens. The drug is an emotion suppressant which, in turn, prevents people from feeling angry or the urge to revolt against even the most absurd governmental decisions. To make sure these laws are enforced, a special unit in the police called the clerics are used to find and kill notorious “sense offenders.” Equilibrium is about the best cleric in the country, named John Preston (Christian Bale), who one day accidentally breaks his dose of Prozium and begins to feel emotion. With conflicting ideologies tearing at him, he eventually begins to feed into his emotions and slowly starts to go against the government. The film follows his transition from once being the coldest weapon to a human being with notions of right and wrong, oh, and tack on the fact that he is an expert marksman and martial arts fighter. With his new partner Brandt (Taye Diggs) on his case, Bale must figure out how to bring down the system and bring the concept of feelings back to society once again. The film also stars Emily Watson (Red Dragon) and Sean Bean (Game of Thrones) in supporting roles.
Like the first time, I really enjoyed watching Equilibrium. The acting was pretty good but the story and evolution of Christian Bale’s character is what made this piece a true joy to watch. Many action movies forget the importance of character development, but writer/director Kurt Wimmer made sure not to make that mistake and brought in a bit of philosophy to spice n’ everything up.
I also can’t forget to say that the actions sequences were quite impressive. Both the gun battles and fight scenes were very well choreographed even though the fighting wasn’t as flashy as you might be used too. Instead, many of the gun fights were tight, in close quarters, and quick. The same thing goes for any of the sword fights or hand to hand combat scenes, it all ended too quickly despite it all being very mouth watering. I guess you can just call it a different style of fighting, since it actually is.
As for the blu ray review, I thought the DVD looked very good on my crappy screen at home. When it comes to the special features, there really wasn’t much there to look at. I did think the smart menu technology was cool, it allowed me to browse the menu without having to stop the film which I thought was lovely. There was also a documentary called Finding Equilibrium that wasn’t that long or in-depth. I wanted to see some more behind the scenes footage but the documentary just didn’t dive into all of what I had hoped it would. That’s about all there was on the blu ray side of things, it was lacking in features.
Overall, Equilibrium is a cool little philosophical action film that that definitely makes you think but at the same time will fulfill your action quota for the night.
Rating: Philosophical, focused, and loaded with action, it’s bound to make most sci-fi fans happy (7/10)
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