Flash forward to the not so distant future, soon after America went to war with Iraq and sparked WWIII. What little remains of the human race now lives in Libria, an uber-Scientology community overseen by the authoritarian Father. During Equilibrium’s preposterous opening sequence, Father (read: Big Brother, the Man, et al.) goes on about “the true nature of man’s inhumanity to man” and how the only way to stop violence is to kill anyone who “feels.” Hence the Prozium II capsules everyone in town has to inject into their necks in order to provoke stone-cold performances. Christian Bale stars as Father’s most powerful Grammaton Clerick, a beefy wire-fu expert in charge of shooting sense offenders. Not only does Clerick John Preston (Bale) get to burn the Mona Lisa but he also gets to shoot someone through a copy of the Collected Works of William Butler Yeats. Oh, the humanity! Soon Clerick stops taking his daily Prozium II dosage and grows fond of the Underground revolution thanks in part to Mary O’Brian (Emily Watson) and her emotional gaze. As Clerick Brandt, Taye Diggs and his ludicrous command of the dramatic pause almost single-handedly trumps the Klaus Badelt score that recycles and remixes the same Gregorian chant for nearly two hours. Writer-director Kurt Wimmer operates under the assumption that floral prints are dangerous and Eames-era décor is, by nature, free of emotion. What with all the ludicrous maxims (“Breath is a just a clock ticking”), “Justice League” infrastructure names (sense offenders are taken to the Hall of Justice before being burned in the Hall of Destruction) and buzz terms (“processing” and “execution”) Wimmer freely throws around, Equlibrium could pass for a 13-year-old’s book report on the totalitarian themes of 1984 and Farenheit 451. It’s the fight sequences that are key here and while Bale makes for a punchy action hero, Equilibrium is likely to appeal only to the sci-fi fanboy who thinks “Carmina Burana” is the greatest of techno songs.
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