Review of Equilibrium

Introduction

Equilibrium was released earlier this year hyped up in billboards as being ‘the next Matrix’ in regards to its blend of action and sci-fi. Sitting pretty on a high 7 rating on IMDB at the time of writing – very impressive for a sci-fi film – can we expect anything from this imitator in ‘the Year of The Matrix’?

John Preston (played by Christian Bale of American Psycho and soon-to-be Batman fame) is a Grammatron Cleric, a servant of a Big Brother-esque godhead trained in exterminating anyone opposing the government’s law against emotions. In this vision of the future, all citizens are forced to inject a serum which ‘cures’ you of the emotions which have caused a millenium of wa and conflict. Unfortunately they also erase emotions that some rebels find appealing – love and happiness. John Preston ruthlessly tracks down these misguided people without a hint of remorse – until he finds that his own partner (Sean Bean, in another criminally minor role) has been skipping his daily serum doses in order to experience human emotions, leading Preston to question his belief in the system he has served unflinchingly all his life.

Video

The picture on this disc is pretty much flawless. The level of detail is very high - even when we expect all recent releases to have very sharp pictures, this impresses. The colours are strong and the black levels in the many shadowy, sinister scenes are solid.

Audio

Again, no complaints on the audio front: the 5.1 DD soundtrack is loud, clear and makes very good use of spatial effects. Some of the gunplay scenes are excellent, and even in the quieter scenes the surrounds produce nice ambient effects. 9/10, and deservedly so.

Features

The main features on this disc are the two commentaries: one with director Kurt Wimmer, and the other with Wimmer and his producer Lucas Foster – a rather strange choice to have the director record two commentaries, as it leads to a certain amount of duplication. Saying that however, after a nervous start Wimmer’s solo comentary proves to be fairly good, although more informative than entertaining, and the other commentary is still worth a listen too as the pair do bring up things that wasn’t mentioned by Wimmer before.

The other extras on this disc are hardly worth a mention: the ‘Finding Equilibrium’ name for the documntary is apt, as you won’t find anything else but a 5-min piece that, due to its shortness, never really goes into the making of quite an ambitious film. Trailers and TV spots complete the extras.

Conclusion

Arrghhh. You know that feeling when you go into a movie sure that there’s no way it can be bad, if not exactly ‘good’, but it still is? I’m sorry to say that I felt that from the opening scenes, right until the end. At first hoping for a smart sci-fi picture, I was sorely let down by the contrived nature of the story and the absurd characterisation.

The posters and promotional taglines reeks of cheese – and not of the cool cheese that Matrix has everyone believing, but the of variety that makes you cringe. For example, a look at some of the taglines reveals Equilibrium was marketed with the line: “Two men. One battle. No compromise.” Need I say more?

The cheesiness of the film would not be a problem if it compensated for it by included some magnificent action scenes – The Matrix Revolutions is a testament to that – or if it didn’t take itself seriously and was meant to be a bit of fun, like Kill Bill was. However, Equilibrium not only is a poor attempt at making a sci-fi film with gravitas, but also the hyped Gun-Kata scenes, a ‘new way of fighting’ mixing gunplay with kung fu, like a über-John Woo film, falls pretty flat. The CGI-effects are obvious (although the special effects for the rest of the film are good) and the fight scenes are neither impressive nor long enough to warrant sitting through a ridiculous plot for the action scenes to come along.

Unfortunately the DVD, although great visually and aurally, could never make up for such a turkey of a film. The extras package is also mediocre, which can only be a good thing, as hopefully it won’t even tempt features-aficionados into buying such a waste of film.