Equilibrium

Over the weekend I watched a flawed action movie featuring the following characteristics: gun kata, pre-Batman post-American Psycho Christian Bale, mawkish sentimentality, grisly murder of multiple fascist policemen in motorcycle helmets, mass drug use, blatant cribbing of Orwell’s 1984, that guy from Ally McBeal who walked around in his underwear a lot, and Sean Bean.

I am talking, of course, about Equilibrium!

I'm well hard, I am.

I like this movie. I do. There is so much wrong with it. The “borrowing” from 1984 is a bit too blatant. Sean Pertwee is slightly miscast as the big daddy bad guy when he would have done a much better job with the insidious little daddy bad guy that gets all the lines. Taye Diggs (he of the skinny lawyer and the underwear) really struggles with a role that couldn’t have been that hard. Emily Watson plays the most boring character ever. Half of the big twist is crap. And Sean Bean lasts about three minutes.

So... you don't like Yeats?

However… the other half of the big twist is awesome, as is the mayhem that follows. Taye Digg’s ridiculous grin makes me want to punch him, which is really quite a good reaction from the audience for an action movie that can’t figure out what it’s doing. Angus MacFadyen (I had to check the spelling twice) is really not bad at all as the insidious bad guy with all the lines. And, as silly as it gets, it is nice to watch an action movie that at least tries to have a story or even moral compass other than kill all pinko lefty communists.

It's ok John Matrix, I still love you.

Also, GUN KATA!!!!

Gun Kata is simultaneously ridiculously goofy and very awesome, because while you are laughing at Christian Bale he WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE.

I will say though, one moment was truly culturally apocalyptic, a true nadir of crapness, unquestionable evidence that somebody needed to get into that script with a very vicious pen. Christian Bale’s character finds redemption in part through a very cute puppy.

Ok, the "do they eat them?" line is funny.

Now, it wouldn’t be that bad except for a couple of things. One, the movie starts with him shooting Sean Bean in the face. I know what you’re thinking, but his character is supposed to like Sean Bean. Then he has a series of incredibly boring conversations with a thoroughly bored looking Emily Watson. After all that, he encounters a pen of dogs, which the motorcycle helmet wearing fascists informed him they had to mow down women and children to reach and open. Bale (I’m too lazy to refer to him using the protagonist’s name, ok?) doesn’t bat an eyelid but gets all gooey when the puppy shows up.

I mean, come on. I know we all like puppies. You like puppies. If you don’t like puppies, you’re lying. We all like them.

See? We all like them.

But this movie needed a puppy? Really? Ugh.

Oh well. Other than all that, Equilibrium was as awesome this weekend as it was the first time I sat in a cinema and tried to ignore how much it stole ideas from 1984 and got a bit boring in the middle. GUN KATA!!!