Equilibrium (2002)

	Directed by: Kurt Wimmer	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama/Sci-Fi NORWEGIAN TITLE Equilibrium RUNNING TIME 107 minutes
	Produced by: Jan de Bont Lucas Foster
	Written by: Kurt Wimmer

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
John Preston	Christian Bale	½
Errol Partridge	Sean Bean
Jürgen	William Fichtner	½
Dupont	Angus MacFayden	½
Brandt	Taye Diggs
Mary O'Brien	Emily Watson	½

Review

1984 meets The Matrix in this futuristic pop-action film about a society in which war and suffering have been eradicated by the government, led by the idealistic Father, forcing people to suppress their ability to feel. Christian Bale plays John Preston, who is Father's ultimate puppet due to his unparalleled ability to detect so-called Sense Offenders – people who have refrained from taking their doses. Writer/director Kurt Wimmer has some interesting ideas surfacing and captures some fine scenes, but the scenarios he presents both feel incomplete and somewhat irrelevant. Incomplete because of their exclusively urban perspective – a society that seems to comprise only the resistance and the enforcers, making the world difficult to identify with. The typically minimalistic, cold sets are inevitable for this sub-genre, but the lack of attention to detail deprives the film of the ability to creep under our skin. And irrelevant due to the fact that increased individual freedom and increased human diversity have been the worldwide tendency for quite some time. In George Orwell's Cold War-era, when regimes closer to the one portrayed in Equilibrium actually existed (e.g. the DDR), prophecies such as this and 1984 were much more relevant.

Still, Equilibrium has its qualities, mostly concerning the spectre of human emotion, and how we relate to our ability to feel – how it makes us who we are. Christian Bale is Wimmer's much-used instrument, and his expressive face is appealing, but his performance here nevertheless remains somewhat shallow throughout. He achieved most of what he tries to do here much better with his role as Patrick Bateman two years earlier. And even though he may be able to keep Equilibrium engaging for most of its running time, the film loses much of its integrity as an idealistic discussion when it becomes increasingly apparent that Wimmer solves any challenging plot situation by elevating his protagonist to an unbeatable, computer-generated, ballet-dancing killer that has The Matrix worship written far too obviously all over him. I can be partial to appreciating style over substance, but not style as replicated and unoriginal as that of the action sequences in Equilibrium.