Equilibrium

POSTED BY: franco
UPDATED: Sunday, May 22, 2005 01:24
VIEWED: 13031
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FRANCO

Sunday, June 27, 2004 3:47 AM

I just caught this Kurt Wimmer flick on Showtime last week.

It is a post apocalypse cross between Matrix and F415 interesting action scenes with an original twist, a martial arts discipline with hand guns called gun kata

It had a short release and got some terrible reviews but it was a pleasant surprise to me.I understand it has become a "cult favorite" which everyone here should relate to.

Try it you'll like it

BLUESUNCORPORATEGOON

Sunday, June 27, 2004 4:02 AM

I really enjoyed that movie myself,thought the story ,the action and the acting was well done,some fairly large names for a movie that was in theaters for about 2 weeks.

I'll be in my bunk.-Jayne

MAKEROFPATHS

Sunday, June 27, 2004 5:57 AM

I liked it so much I bought the movie :-)

Never saw it in the theatre listings but a friend rushed up to me after seeing it on a movie channel and told me how much he liked it. He hadn't heard of it before. So I bought the DVD. It was quite well done, but mainstream critics can't relate to this stuff so at the risk of sounding "silly" recommending an SF movie, they pan it. No imagination.

------
"When one man chases a hare, he finds a hare. But when many men chase a hare, they find a dragon."

QUICKSAND

Sunday, June 27, 2004 6:40 AM

I don't know where you read your reviews, but the reviews *I* remember reading were quite mixed. It got all the comparisons to "The Matrix," of course, but it's really not even the same kind of movie. It's got more in common with "1984" than it does anything with Keanu.

It didn't get a release in the U.S. just because it turned a profit overseas first, and the producers just wanted to keep the money rather than mount a huge advertising campaign here in the States. Good movie though, worth watching...

RELFEXIVE

Sunday, June 27, 2004 9:49 AM

It is quite good... not perfect, but what is, but good nonetheless.

Funny with always-dies-before-film-ends Sean Pertwee too

Mal: "We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so... very... pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."

SPIKESMORTICIA

Sunday, June 27, 2004 1:18 PM

I rented the movie only because it had Christian Bale in it, and ended up really liking the movie. It was well done and even though it had Matrix like undertones, I felt it could definitely stand on it's own.

Where did you buy the DVD? This is one movie that I would definitely like to have in my collection.

Being a hero doesn't mean you succeed in saving the day.... it just means you tried.

CREVANREAVER

Sunday, June 27, 2004 4:10 PM

I also watched it on Showtime a little while ago. I thought it was great and I found the whole concept of Gun Kata incredible interesting and highly imaginative. I searched through the internet and found a lot of background information on the movie. Using all available info, I came up with a synopsis of the history of the Equilibrium World just for fun.

I hope you guys like it!

After a horrendous global nuclear war in the middle of the tweny-first century those who survived knew mankind could never survive another war like it, that humanity's own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So they turned North America into a vast citadel realm known as "Libria", under a ruling party called the Tetragrammaton, the Greek term for the ineffable four-letter Hebrew name of God. The leader of the Tetragrammaton was simply called ”Father“. Libria was created with the idea that the true source of man's inhumanity to man is his ability to feel.

The government outlawed the human quality most likely to give rise to future conflicts: emotion. Father believed that emotions are a disease in the heart of man and it’s symptoms are hate, anger, rage and war. In response to this, the entire population of Libria has been placed on a daily regimen of Prozium, a drug that suppresses all emotions. Citizens of Libria obtain their Prozium at distribution centers called Equilibrium. With it, they anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. That those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, they accept as fair sacrifice. And it is this conscience that guided the government to rate the emotional content all those things that might tempt them to feel again and destroy them. The Tetragrammaton has declared illegal anything that stimulates human emotions: art, music, poetry, literature, and even such things as puppies. Feeling is a crime punishable by death.

A repressed version of utopia is achieved because no one suffers unhappiness or depression, and since hatred has been eradicated, war is fundamentally impossible. It's the preservation of the human race by a most drastic means. Of course, a central disadvantage is the associated purging of empathy, compassion, and remorse.

To make sure that the population of Libria doesn't yield to emotional temptation, the government has also created an elite monastic force known as the Grammaton Clerics. These highly skilled martial artists seek out and destroy emotional objects that remain and, if necessary, those who attempted to own them along with perpetrators of "sense offenses," rebels who refuse to part with (or seek to regain) their emotions. These "sense offenders" are shot dead or brought to the Chamber of Hell Fire to be burned.

Ironically, the Grammaton Clerics, are finely developed sensors, who mask their ability to feel under the title of the "Intuitive Arts." This intuition they place at the service of ferreting out sense offenders. The Clerics are the government point-men and designated hitters in the frequent shootouts with armed sense offenders, who are loath to surrender themselves for Processing, and persist in hopelessly defending their hoarded copies of old artwork, books, music and anything else that would provoke creative thought and emotion. A Cleric channels sensing into intuition, and aggression into lawful killing, which is a moral imperative, because of the great risk that feelings pose to society at large.

The Clerics are trained in the art of Gun Kata, which is a militant combat style that teaches efficiency in the use of gun tactics based upon the premise that the positions and actions of antagonists can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy in any given combat situation.

Developed through analysis of thousands of recorded gun fights, it was determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element. Gun-kata is based on a scientific analysis of bullet trajectory and range based on the mathematical possible outcomes of a gunfight.

A close q

FRANCO

Sunday, June 27, 2004 9:04 PM

Very good synopsis. I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to all for the validation that is is a good film.

Considering the limited distribution and luke warm response it received, I was feeling a bit self conscientious about my favorable opinion.

I am often a shameless apologist for bad scifi.

QUICKSAND

Sunday, June 27, 2004 9:18 PM

It's not bad sci-fi. It's just pretty much ANY martial arts movie pales in comparison now that we've all seen "The Matrix," and the plot beneath it was, yeah, thinly stolen from 1984. But it's not BAD Sci-Fi... if anything, it's more emotionally charged than most brainless action movies, so the appeal was more limited.

If it had been released in the theatres, it could have pulled down a respectable $40-50 million.

Kurt Wimmer's next movie, according to the IMDB, is something called, "Ultraviolet," currently set for release sometime in 2004. It's plot is something like:

Quote:
Set in the late 21st century, a subculture of humans have emerged who have been modified genetically by a vampire-like disease (Hemophagia), giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence, and as they are set apart from "normal" and "healthy" humans, the world is pushed to the brink of worldwide civil war (a war between humans and hemophages) aimed at the destruction of the "diseased" population.

In the middle of this crossed-fire is - an infected woman - Ultraviolet (played by Milla Jovovich), who finds herself protecting a nine-year-old boy who has been marked for death by the human government as he is believed to be a threat to humans.

I dunno, there's bad sci-fi, and then there's high-concept but low-budget sci-fi... I'd take this over the crap they show on the Sci-Fi channel any day.

MISGUIDED BY VOICES

Sunday, June 27, 2004 9:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by franco:
Very good synopsis. I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to all for the validation that is is a good film.

Considering the limited distribution and luke warm response it received, I was feeling a bit self conscientious about my favorable opinion.

Saw this quite by accident during its one or two limited weeks in the UK cinemas (this film rocks on the big screen) - can't remember what film we were aiming to see, but missed that due to a Monkeyball related error (addictive little thing that game) so caught Equilibrium instead.

The plot and dialogue suggests that they thought this was a little more important than it actually was (cf Matrix 2&3 and 1 when you think about it) - but it looks stunning (and cost a fraction of most blockbusters). Mostly a UK cast, though oddly Christian Bale has an American accent (I'm fairly certain this and American Psycho got him the Batman gig).

This idea is pretty cool, and the fight sequences are truly innovative - given usually you only get variations on wire-fu, the gun kata scenes are stunning and leave you grinning from ear to ear. The region 2 DVD acknowledges the true strength of the film, with a "jump to fight" option.

I have described this to people as the the best bad film ever, and everyone that has seen it agrees on both counts.

"I threw up on your bed"

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