Extras:
Trailer, TV Spots, Finding Equilibrium, Audio Commentaries
Director:
Kurt Wimmer
(Equilibrium, One Tough Bastard, Ultraviolet)
Producers:
Jan de Bont and Lucas Foster
Screenplay:
Kurt Wimmer
Music:
Klaus Badelt
Cast:
John Preston: Christian Bale
Brandt: Taye Diggs
Mary O'Brien: Emily Watson
Dupont: Angus Macfadyen
Jürgen: William Fichtner
The Father: Sean Pertwee
Robbie Preston: Matthew Harbour
Errol Partridge: Sean Bean
Seamus: Dominic Purcell
If a song should be used as the theme to Equilibrium,
it should be Howard Jones' Welcome To Conditioning
since every trace of feeling has been wiped from the minds of mankind... or at least it
should be if they don't want to incur the wrath of The Grammaton Cleric.
This movie presents a society that almost out-"1984"s 1984 itself and with a landscape
that looks like it belongs in the game
Half Life 2
where, as a result of a third World War, The Grammaton Cleric outlaw the lawless leaving
mankind only to be allowed to supress their emotions and not be able to think for themselves.
It's almost like that Simpsons 'Treehouse of Horror' episode where everyone must think
happy thoughts, but then that's not even allowed either.
Everything centres around a place called Equilibrium where The Father (Sean Pertwee)
dishes out the law from behind closed doors and rates anything he deems fit "EC-10" for
"Emotional Content", while leaving lapdog Dupont (Angus Macfadyen) in charge to
with anything that might be a bit difficult. It's also from this place where the tablets of
Prozium are dished out to control the public.
In all, after everyone's injected themselves with Prozium and rid themselves of all potential
thought and excitement, it makes their world about on a par with that of the inhabitants
of Eastenders.
The best of the best in this society is John Preston (Christian Bale) who's quite happy
to take out the trash and burn priceless works of art just because such things make mankind
feel good, but soon after he discovers his partner, Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) has
been having independent thought - aka a "sense offence" - and has been snaffling books from
the Nethers, where the dregs of society reside, for some time recently, and Preston - principled
man that he is - is going to sort him out. And woe betide anyone who stands in his way because
he's a lethal machine thanks to the Gun Kata, which trains him to be so by anticipating the moves
and counter-moves of your enemies.
Alas, before you can shout "Hello, Mr Pot, here's Mr Kettle", Preston decides to break
free and charges about righting wrongs around the stark locations as if he's appearing in a
Maxell blank cassette advert from 20 years previously. You see, his wife was arrested and
incinerated for a sense offence four years earlier and when he comes across the latest
sense offender, Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson who looks stunning in this movie), he
falls for her because he's been off the tablets for a while and wants her all to himself.
That said, it's not going to be an easy task to accomplish.
About the cast in this movie, this was actually the first time I've seen Christian Bale
in a leading role, despite him having made many a film in his time. He's just the right man
for the job here as he perfectly puts across the cool demeanour of a principled future cop
before realising all those policies are bullshit and that he wants his own way after all.
The next two of his I plan to catch up with are Batman Begins and The Machinist.
Taye Diggs takes up the role as his partner after Sean Bean is relieved of his position,
while William Fichtner plays a key role in assisting Bale but I won't say how. For those
who know his name but aren't sure who he is, Fichtner played the blind guy Kent in
Contact, he was Sheriff Tom Underlay in Invasion, took time out to be the voice
of Ken Rosenberg in the
Grand Theft Auto
computer games and is currently appearing as FBI Agent Alexander Mahone in the second season of
Prison Break. Coincidentally, although they don't share screen time, that show's
Dominic Purcell plays a resistance fighter in a cameo role here early on.
Overall, the plot behind Equilibrium is not a new one, but it's one that's carried
out nicely. Thanks to cast, crew and writing on display, this all makes for a very entertaining
film even if it is one of those that'll have an obvious ending. Ignore anyone
who makes comparisons with
The Matrix.
I thought that one sucked, but this is great.
The film is presented in its original cinematic ratio of 2.35:1 and is anamorphic. The picture
is a bit stuttery as the camera pans across, but otherwise it's a very clean and crisp print,
bringing out perfectly the bleak world in which the film takes place. This is not related to the
frequent action moments when a faster shutter is used in the filming to giving a similar look
to fast-paced events in the movie. The film was shot in Super 35, but the 4:3 presentation
of the featurette mentioned later on proves that the CGI scenes suffer really badly in cropped
form. In fact, I was spurred on to buy this DVD having seen the opener on Channel 4 recently, but
I could see it really suffered being in 16:9 with standard surround sound.
This DVD carries only a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, but it certainly cuts the mustard
mainly for the frequent action sequences.
The extras are very few and are as follow below, but don't include the 'Gun
Kata' featurette mentioned on the back of the box:
Trailer (1:32):
Presented in 16:9 letterbox, this spoils quite a number of key moments in the movie so don't watch
it prior to that.
TV Spots (0:50):
There are five TV trailers here, shown in 16:9 anamorphic, but the weird this is that they all last
ten seconds each, but that's followed by ten more seconds with a frozen picture, so the time for this
segment should technically be 1:40. I wonder why on Earth they'd do that?
Finding Equilibrium (4:25):
A brief puff-piece about various aspects of the film, all briefly, with soundbites from key cast members
and the director. It's not something that'll trouble you to watch it a second time. This piece is in
4:3 fullscreen.
Audio Commentaries:
There are two here. One from director Kurt Wimmer on his own, with the other featuring both
him and producer Lucas Foster.
The only subtitles come in English, the menu system reflects the tone of the movie but there's something
wrong with the chapter selection menu. There are 27 chapters within, but only 15 of them are accessible
from this menu, making it seem like there are less than there really are. I don't understand the point
of this and I've never seen Momentum do this before. In fact, it hasn't been something I've come
across since the early days of DVD and the 1998 release of the Michael Douglas thriller
Disclosure
which had 44 chapters, but made it look from the menu like there were only 9. I hope this isn't something
they do again.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
