Equilibrium (2002)

Equilibrium (2002)

 7/10

Starring

Christian Bale

Emily Watson

Taye Diggs

Directed by Kurt Wimmer

Equilibrium was my second take on Christian Bale as an actor and his role in this movie shows the different degrees to which this man can deliver on a role. When you put up his performance side by side with the others to which he starred along, he was just high above them in delivery. The movie suffered one major downside – when Bale had to take on the main villain, it was anti-climactic.
This movie is one of the most underrated Sci-Fi movies you should see.

The movie displayed some amazing fighting skills by the Clerics, who are the people employed to deal with those who break the law of no emotions.

The movie's setting is very similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four a novel by George Orwell, but the story differs. Set in the 21st century after World War III, which somehow this present world has found a way not to get sucked into. In a totalitarian state called Libiria (setup by survivors of World War III) has all emotions and emotionally stimulating objects forbidden. To enforce this rule of living with no emotions a daily dose of a psychopharmaceutic drug called Prozium II is to be used by the people.

The city is governed by the Tetragrammaton Council which is led by someone called Father, who communicates propaganda to the people.

In 2072, John Preston (Christian Bale) was a high-ranking Cleric. These Clerics are equipped with some amazing martial skills and are magnificent in the use of gun. They are fast and are even able to in some way dodge bullets (not in the matrix style).

John's wife, Viviana, was executed four years prior to the now as a Sense Offender. John did nothing to help her when his home was raided and she was captured. The incident made him single parent to a son and a daughter.

During a raid to capture and kill some group resistance to the new order, John found out that his partner was also a Sense Offender. His partner stole a book of poems, when John tracks him down his partner refused to be captured and John had to kill him. John mistakenly missed a dosage of his drug before going for on another raid and that is when things started to become clearer to him. He starts to question everything and before long he was a problem that needed to be eliminated.

Fantastic movie, fun action fights and a movie to watch again now in 2019. Even if it is just to see Christian Bale do what his best at doing, being an actor.