Equilibrium is set in the 21st Century where after World War III the state of Libira has been formed by it's founder Father (Sean Pertwee), there all emotion has been declared illegal & the population have their emotions blocked with a drug named Prozium. All artwork, culture & feeling is banned & punishable by instant execution by the hard as nails police force The Tetragrammaton Clerics. John Preston (Christian Bale) is a top level cleric who is so hard as nails he stood by while his wife & the mother of his young son was convicted of a 'sense offence' & cremated alive. However John accidentally misses one of his Prozium doses & the human emotion & feeling starts to come back to him, he quickly realises that the society which he works for is wrong & corrupt & humans have the right to feel. John teams up with a gang of underground rebels to bring Father & his emotionless society down...
Written & directed by Kurt Wimmer I must admit that I am in two minds over Equilibrium, on the one hand it's quite an engaging Sci-Fi thriller that does occasionally strike a chord & makes you think but on the other hand the whole concept is so poorly thought out & impossible to buy into that I spent the whole film asking questions that were never answered. The idea of a future enclosed society in which a Fascist Government or regime tries to exert total control over it's population & one lone inside rebel sets out to do something about it has been done before in various Sci-Fi films & books like THX 1138 (1971), Demolition Man (1993) & George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eigthy Four (1949) along with ripping-off other Sci-Fi flicks like the empathy test from Blade Runner (1982) & of course The Matrix (1999) inspired action scenes in which the frankly silly sounding concept of someone being able to mathematically work out where someone will fire bullets & therefore avoid them (named 'Gun Kata') is used. In fact there are a lot of clichés in Equilibrium & the basic concept is flawed since Libira seems to be one city but what about the rest of the world? Would they not still have emotion? Who would join such a society anyway? The basic idea that all emotion is suppressed is just hard to swallow as well, it just wouldn't work under the ultra strict conditions in Equilibrium. Having said that if you can get past the shaky concept & writing then the character's are alright, the story moves along & there's some decent action scenes & ideas but the basic concept which I don't think works at all is it's biggest flaw.
The action scenes do look like they have come straight out of The Matrix & in fact are inferior, there's certainly not a lot of action so don't expect fights & shoot-outs every few minutes. The depiction of the future is reasonable, it's not that different than it is now apart from the basic morals of the society, the actual technology doesn't seem to advanced as people still drive around in cars & live in apartment blocks. As you would expect from a film set in an emotionless society the production design is deliberately bland yet stylish, people wear blacks & greys, apartments are bare with no colour or carpets or wallpaper & even everyone looks the same.
With a supposed budget of about $20,000,000 this was actually fairly low budget & that probably accounts for a not too spectacular vision of the future. Filmed in Germany & Italy before some re-shoots in Canada. The acting is alright although Sean Bean has nothing more than a three minute cameo despite near top billing in the credits.
Equilibrium is a film that within itself works quite well & is entertaining enough but for a Sci-Fi film that takes itself extremely seriously the plot & concepts therein don't stand up at all. I liked & disliked it in equal measure.
Written & directed by Kurt Wimmer I must admit that I am in two minds over Equilibrium, on the one hand it's quite an engaging Sci-Fi thriller that does occasionally strike a chord & makes you think but on the other hand the whole concept is so poorly thought out & impossible to buy into that I spent the whole film asking questions that were never answered. The idea of a future enclosed society in which a Fascist Government or regime tries to exert total control over it's population & one lone inside rebel sets out to do something about it has been done before in various Sci-Fi films & books like THX 1138 (1971), Demolition Man (1993) & George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eigthy Four (1949) along with ripping-off other Sci-Fi flicks like the empathy test from Blade Runner (1982) & of course The Matrix (1999) inspired action scenes in which the frankly silly sounding concept of someone being able to mathematically work out where someone will fire bullets & therefore avoid them (named 'Gun Kata') is used. In fact there are a lot of clichés in Equilibrium & the basic concept is flawed since Libira seems to be one city but what about the rest of the world? Would they not still have emotion? Who would join such a society anyway? The basic idea that all emotion is suppressed is just hard to swallow as well, it just wouldn't work under the ultra strict conditions in Equilibrium. Having said that if you can get past the shaky concept & writing then the character's are alright, the story moves along & there's some decent action scenes & ideas but the basic concept which I don't think works at all is it's biggest flaw.
The action scenes do look like they have come straight out of The Matrix & in fact are inferior, there's certainly not a lot of action so don't expect fights & shoot-outs every few minutes. The depiction of the future is reasonable, it's not that different than it is now apart from the basic morals of the society, the actual technology doesn't seem to advanced as people still drive around in cars & live in apartment blocks. As you would expect from a film set in an emotionless society the production design is deliberately bland yet stylish, people wear blacks & greys, apartments are bare with no colour or carpets or wallpaper & even everyone looks the same.
With a supposed budget of about $20,000,000 this was actually fairly low budget & that probably accounts for a not too spectacular vision of the future. Filmed in Germany & Italy before some re-shoots in Canada. The acting is alright although Sean Bean has nothing more than a three minute cameo despite near top billing in the credits.
Equilibrium is a film that within itself works quite well & is entertaining enough but for a Sci-Fi film that takes itself extremely seriously the plot & concepts therein don't stand up at all. I liked & disliked it in equal measure.