By RACHEL M. BOLTON
Managing Editor
Back in the far off year of 1999, the Wachowski Siblings made a popular film called The Matrix. Since it was such a huge hit, studios knew that they could profit off the hype. Thus Equilibrium came to be. Like The Matrix, it has the hero in a black priest outfit, a dark dystopia, and a strange method of kung fu. However, the film has more in common with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. While not being super original, Equilibrium is good at playing with the tropes of the genre and world building.
In the not so far off future, humanity has gone through another world war. The remainders of civilization know that they cannot have another war. So in the city of Libria, emotion has been banned along with anything that can inspire it. The leader is a Big Brother-esque man called Father and the citizens take a drug called prozium to block having emotions.
The enforcers of the society are martial arts masters called Clerics and practice Gun-Kata, which I will explain later. Christian Bale plays Cleric John Preston. I don’t know why they are called clerics—you would think that religion would be banned in this world. I guess that movie priests are only cool when they are waving guns around.
It’s a cleric’s job to serve the will of Father and deal with rebels in the Neathers, the nuked wasteland outside the city. The Neathers is also the source of a plot hole, it’s obvious that they in a burned out part of Paris, but none of the characters are French, but I digress.
After burning the Mona Lisa, Preston and his partner, Errol (Sean Bean, heh) return to the city. However, Preston notices that Errol brought back a book, saying that he was going to dispose of it later. But Errol is a sense offender, a person who has stopped taking the prozium drug and thus has feelings.  The punishment for being one is death, and Preston’s own wife was executed for being one.
But after dealing with the fallout with Errol, Preston accidentally breaks his dosage of the drug, and goes without it for day. However, one he starts feeling compassion, it’s hard to stop.
Two things about this movie surprised me. One being, that this is the second film I have reviewed this year that had Sean Bean in it. Of course being Sean Bean, his character does what all of his characters do: die—and early on, too. Let’s all giggle at the fact that this is the closest you will get to seeing Batman kill Sean Bean.
The other thing that was surprising about Equilibrium is that they made Preston a father, a single father in fact. It is unusual for a hero like him to have children. By giving him a son and daughter, the film gets to humanize him in a different way, and compared to some other action leads, his children are not kidnapped or killed to give him man-pain. The family gives a different insight to the film’s dystopia and the children do move the plot along, just not in the way you think.
Now as to the Gun Kata, basically it’s kung fu with guns. I admit that I do not know much about firearms but I am sure that is not how they work. It was almost comical watching Christian Bale stand perfectly still while his arms fired the guns in every direction. The movie says it’s supposed to work because of math. The best Gun Kata battle in the film was one that happened with the participants two feet away from each other.
I watched this movie with the expectation that it would be a bad film with the only redeeming factor of having decent action scenes. I was wrong. Yes, this movie is laughably silly in some places and it has a fair share of plot holes. But it does a good job of characterizing Preston as he slowly discovers and deals with emotions, and some parts of the movie are genuinely quite sad.  It also does not do the over used “chosen one” trope. Equilibrium makes sure to state that Preston’s role could have been done by any Cleric who wanted to feel.
If you like dystopias and action films, you will enjoy this film. Just don’t try Gun Kata at home, kids.
Equilibrium is available to watch on Netflix Stream.
