The few people who saw Equilibrium in theaters openly compared it to The Matrix, as if that were the first action film to feature martial arts, guys dressed in black or thumping techno music. Although Christian Bale’s blank-faced performance does suggest an ace Keanu Reeves impression, Ultraviolet director Kurt Wimmer’s film really owes more debt to dusty books with numbers in their titles — namely, George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
The Dark Knight himself, Bale stars as John Preston, a “cleric,” which is a fancy-sounding term for a futuristic government/sentry/cop type charged with finding and burning anything that allows people to experience emotions. All feelings have been outlawed, see; the powers that be keep the public pacified and zombie-faced through daily injections of a sedative.
But when Preston accidentally breaks his dose and can’t get another, he begins to question his ways, allegiance and life. Heck, he even begins to feel and sniff Emily Watson’s red ribbon when no one’s looking.
If it sounds all thinky-schminky, well, yeah, it is. But it’s not bogged down in Matrix-type explanations that are so wordy, they cease to be explanations at all. The high points are the action scenes, in which Bale engages in a kind of turbo-charged gunplay we hadn’t seen before (at least at the time). He’s also skilled with the sword, neatly slicing off Taye Diggs’ face toward the end.
While not great, it’s certainly better than either The Matrix Reloaded or The Matrix Revolutions, which alone should make it worth a rental. —Rod Lott