The set up is a good one,
however somehow this film fails to convince, perhaps it is the the huge shadow
of the Matrix which looms over this film by just doing everything better. Or it could be the sets which just don't look convincing, from the
ludicrous white sedan that the Clerics drive or the shiny city fake looking city in which the action
happens. Maybe it is the outright ridiculousness of the Underground, a partisan movement, which Bale
connects with, but which no other tool of the regime has been able to find, and is in fact directly
underneath the city itself, despite it being the most locked down place on
earth. I mean where do they go to get groceries?
Set in a dystopian
future where emotion and feeling have been pharmaceutically suppressed by a
totalitarian, quasi-religious regime Equilibrium follows our protagonist John Preston (Christian Bale) as he starts to question the regime he works. This is awkward as he holds the position of Cleric, a harsh enforcer of the regime who is tasked with policing its anti-feeling philosophy.
Perhaps it is the action scenes where the the ability of the Cleric to take
down 8 guys stood round him with guns drawn based on probability stretches the
limit of believability. Even Neo dodged bullets because he was a computer
programme and he could rewrite his own code, the Cleric is just somehow really good at
trigonometry.
Throw in some
uninteresting love interest and you have a movie that while not bad, never
fulfills the potential of its backstory. Watch the Matrix instead.
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