#3916 - 04/26/04 02:46 PM
Movie review: Equilibrium
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Jamin
Cookie Crisp
Registered: 02/25/05
Posts: 2649
Loc: Texas
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Take the general philosophy of books like 1984 or Farenheit 451, and combine it with the action of the Matrix, and you get Equilibrium.
This is a movie about John Preston, a high-ranking member of what are essentially the secret police of Libria. Libria is a country that has outlawed anything that causes people to feel, like art and music, because feelings are the root cause of war. They also made it mandatory that everyone take Prozium, a certain drug which equalizes emotion to make it pretty much nonexistant. The entire government is headed by "Father," a omniscient Big Brother type figure with absolute power. Preston misses a dose of Prozium, and starts feeling again, and realizes that the whole system blows ass. He then sets off to find a way to bring it down.
The acting in the movie is as good as can be expected, when every character is on a drug that makes them mindless robots. That's not to say that everyone is a completely mindless robot. You do get a good range of minimal emotions from the characters, and they all do a good job. Still, they all kind of come off as a little wooden. I guess that's part of the point, though.
The real draw of the movie is the action. "Gun Kata" was a new martial art form created for this movie, and involves the fact that the person holding the gun stands in a certain place and moves his hands in a certain pattern and is statistically more likely to hit everyone, while not getting hit himself. It's pretty fun to watch. Mix that with some sword fighting later in the movie, and one scene where Preston actually kills a dozen or so guards by pistol-whipping them to death in about thirty seconds, and you've got a generally exciting movie experience.
The script is well done and very much intelligent. Lots of "deep thoughts" type stuff, that really makes you think about sociology and how society works. If you've read 1984 or Farenheit 451, you'll feel right at home with the movie's general back-plot.
This movie didn't really make it big in theaters, and I had to go to two or three different stores before I found the DVD. So it may take a little work. But it is so definitely worth it.
Final grade: A-
---Jamin
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#3917 - 04/27/04 05:39 PM
Re: Movie review: Equilibrium
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Hardkore
Corn Flakes
Registered: 12/08/02
Posts: 84
Loc: OMGWTFBBQ!
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I know what you're talking about when you said you had to go to different stores to find it. When it came out last May, I had to go to Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA, and finally some obscure video store on the outskirts of town to get it.
The director commented on that fact during some interview in some entertainment magazine. He said that he knew he succeeded when he made a movie that he could not pay people to see in the theater, but couldn't keep on the shelves on video.
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