Some are more equilibrium than others

I finally rented Equilibrium after hearing again and again from websites and Netflix reviews that indeed this was a good film and that the critics were just really unfair with it. Since I feel the same way about the Matrix trilogy, I felt a need to see it for myself to support its passionate fans. Well.

Equilibrium has all the signs of a good concept that went bad in execution. For starters, the opening montage ruins any atmosphere that could have been built up by the opening scene’s plot-twist. Then we follow Christian Bale through emotionless (by design) scenes that overplay the dystopian elements of the plot to the point of camp. In one explanatory scene, “The Father” gives a passionate speech about how the citizens have won by rejecting their emotions, but isn’t passion an emotion? This is a balance the filmmaker doesn’t win — to sell certain scenes he has to reach the emotion of the audience, but he can’t do that without putting it on the screen. When it’s there it’s out of place and unbalanced, and when it’s not it’s a slow slog through dead deliveries.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s moments. But for every revelation of irony that there’s a war going on when there shouldn’t be any more wars, there’s a poor scene of resistance, like where Bale just can’t kill a puppy. For every moment where they reveal hidden beauty and texture in a world where it’s been systematically erased from homes and cities, there’s some campy tech-speak, like the explanation of “Gun-Kata” — which in action gets to be just as hokey as its brother-in-arms Gymkata (except for one well-crafted fight sequence at the very end of the film). And the hardest revelation being — for each of these positives, the film never takes them beyond what has already been aired in other, greater works like Brazil or 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. It steals from them outright at times, from the flamethrowers in the opening scene to the Axis-like flags of Libria to the “Big Brother” screens proclaiming policies. And it plays these elements safely, instead of expressing what the real weight of oppression living in this nation would be like.

So is it great? No. Is it crap? Actually, no. But it’s not terribly enjoyable if you’ve ever seen any of its inspirations.