Equilibrium

Equilibrium is a post apocalyptic futurey movie with guns, so naturally some comparisons to the Matrix have been made. It does have some excellent shooting scenes but the plot is quite a bit different from the Matrix and it's not quite as good. However, it is still very enjoyable and though it tanked at the box office it has become something of a cult classic amongst Christian Bale fans. Bale showed a lot of range in his early roles prior to getting locked down in the stoic lawman cliche up until the Fighter for about 5 years (The Prestige excluded). However this might be the first film in which he plays a Stoic lawman, and he does it fairly well. The performance isn't amazing by any means but the plot causes that.

In the future Church Nazi dudes have decided human emotion is the cause of conflict and have found a way to suppress it and thus eliminate all war. Meanwhile they form a fascist government and militarize the fuck out of it alongside making super soldiers "Grammar Clerics," every character with more than 5 lines is one of them. There's a brief scene that explains how they shoot people at specific memorized trajectories and dodge according to predictable shooting patterns of humans but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. However it's still fun to watch even though this movie's from 2002. Bale is the highest ranking Cleric and is sent on a roundabout mission to burn out all causes of human emotion, random rebels with stockpiles of paintings and music and other random cultural elements.

This film has its share of plot holes, none of them are catastrophic but some of them are quite odd and somewhat humorous. The first major plot hole is that evidently solidarity and ambition are both encouraged even though both are generally motivated by emotion in the first place, to completely eliminate emotion would eliminate all activity it seems to me, if they singled out specific emotions then it would make more sense. There's a semi-explanation for this near the end but it still doesn't fix the issue entirely. Bale burns the Mona Lisa at the start of the movie but it isn't really explained whether that has any effect on him (one would assume it doesn't) but he eventually becomes pretty malleable anyway, though it seems to have more to do with the magic powers of plot device Prozium.

When you're nearing the end of the movie you have no idea what's going to happen and it's pretty exciting and entertaining up to that point. However when it gets to the end the plot twists back and forth between victory for good or for evil like 6 or 7 times to the point of absurdity. Bale says it's suicide, plot twist something saves him, plot twist something reverts it to the Nazis' favor, plot twist Bale is too awesome for that, plot twist no he isn't, plot twist maybe he is... and so on. This is the biggest flaw with the movie, while it wouldn't be as good as the Matrix without the myriad mistakes it still could have been a great movie instead of merely a good one. I do highly recommend this to people who like Sci-Fi or Christian Bale, it's quite a bit superior to most other Sci Fi movies.

Final Score: 7.5/10