Thursday

I hadn't heard of the film Equilibrium until I saw it on the TV schedule. Intrigued by the premise, the review on IMDb.com, and the casting of Christian Bale, I decided to watch it. I was badly disappointed. This, like the strangely similar Aeon Flux, was terrible. It regurgitated every good idea from science-fiction, but through simplification and without reference. Most obvious of all was Fahrenheit 451 which, as far as I was aware, received no acknowledgement. This was almost a remake of that film. Then there's Logan's Run and, well, everything else. The connection to The Matrix I feel was more stylistic than conceptual, and I have to admit the fight-scenes were ok. The son of Bale's character was interestingly creepy, and has a nice twist at the end. But with such science fiction films you have to invent an entire universe and engage your audience thoroughly with it. The universe created here was very poor (a future earth where feelings are banned, policed by highly trained ninja-like 'clerics'), too simplistic, and probably only appealing to frustrated teenage boys. Although I generally agree with movies that refuse to give the lead character the girl at the end, burning her alive ten minutes before then is clearly not the right way to go about it. Overall, they really needed to acknowledge, or even watch, their predecessors and learn how to do this sort of thing subtly. Instead, it lacks any appeal for repeated viewings.