Equilibrium

Equilibrium (2002)

Image From IMDB

The OG John Wick. Man gives up everything and puts himself in mortal danger to protect a cute little puppy, and we all totally get it.

I don’t know how other people feel about Equilibrium, but i’ve always been a fan. I think in slightly better hands the movie could have been a classic, but as it stands, it’s a great film that feels as relevant now as it did back then. Dystopian movies and books really are starting to win me over a lot of late, I think it is quickly becoming one of my favourite sci-fi sub-genres.

Equilibrium is about John Preston (Christian Bale) who is a Grammaton Cleric. His job is to hunt down and kill (there are very few arrests) any one who has any emotional or artistic thoughts, which have been outlawed after being blamed for one war to many. But, after the death of his partner, and accidentally forgetting to take his daily dose of emotion suppressant, John starts to commit sense crimes himself, and begins to wonder whether the future is actually a little fucked up.

This movie absolutely bombed, and i’ll never quite know why. The trailer and gun-kata did make it feel like a Matrix cash-in at the time, but it never was that, leaning more towards 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 rather than the Wachowskis masterpiece.

The future presented is an interesting and bleak one, but that depressive story is countered with some bizarre action sequences with the gun kata. I do think these are the parts of the movie that could have been a lot better, but at the same time the end sequence was cool. Like they finally found their groove shooting the action.

If the movie was one-hundred percent serious without the odd gunplay side plot I think it really could have been absolutely incredible. The journey Preston goes on is intriguing from the off set as he suspects his partner Sean Bean of sense crimes (we all know where that’s going to lead) His relationship with his little Nazi son and more sensitive daughter is an interesting one. The past with his wife is absolutely insane and a massive part of the movie which maybe could have been looked into more. Everything about this future and the world created interested me.

I feel that maybe it’s one of those movies that could have been better served as a novel, but like I said, I enjoyed it. I thought Bale and Emily Watson were both fantastic, and really liked the whole Father / Big Brother thing with Sean Pertwee. The underground resistance stuff is part and parcel of the genre, but again, I always like that, so it was fine.

Maybe the movie would still get hate now, but i’m not so sure. I dislike that whole internet trend of fake reassessing everything from twenty years ago, but this one actually could be reassessed as it was never given a chance in the first place. There’s a half way decent action film here, but a much better dystopian movie that really explores its ideas.

Equilibrium deserves a lot more respect than it got. It was caught in the middle of too many things, never living up to the Matrix, but also not being as serious as Children of Men or 1984, but I truly believe it should have its own little place. My hope will always be that this movie grows in reputation over time, but if it doesn’t, I’ll still enjoy giving it a watch every couple of years.