Equilibrium (2002)

[jetouellet 2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVDiaYQXBVs

 

Christian Bale plays a guy more powerful than Batman in a post apocalyptic society where no one is allowed to feel, except everyone does.

[RichardTep 1]

BLASPHEMY. I spit in your eye.

[RegFranklin 19]

Equilibrium is awesome simply because it carries on a proud tradition of Sean Bean dying horribly in films.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Bean checks out pretty early too, which is odd, as he was arguably the biggest name in this thing when it came out in 2002 or 2003. Yeah, think about that. This movie starred a guy that was THIS close to becoming one of the most successful stars of the last decade, but SEAN BEAN was the hook.

 

I'm not being sarcastic here, but I thought it was pretty brilliant that this unbeatable fighting style was based around MATH. Being able to know and adjust for every possible outcome is fucking bonkers.

[jetouellet 2]

BLASPHEMY. I spit in your eye.

 

It's not like it's horrible, it's just a really weird movie, one that fits in the vein of Crank or Road House. Just the fact that it was filmed in a month. and John Preston kills so many people (and is in fact number three for all time single character body counts) just would make it interesting for the podcast. Plus a martial art based on math is cool.

[JustinRogers 3]

I enjoyed Equilibrium, I think it's under rated... what's worse though is the female version which was done by the same director. UltraViolet... Man that one is a doosey!

[RyanSz 3140]

Sean Bean on screen in a major role = almost 70% of death. The only thing more certain is that the slut or black guy will be dead by the end of a horror movie.

[CK06 0]

Not a terrible movie, but for a society that's not allowed to feel or show emotions, a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT of emoting is going on. I dunno if they would have a great time ripping it apart, though. Apart from the logic flaws, is there that much to riff on?

[jimkiler 84]

I enjoyed Equilibrium, I think it's under rated... what's worse though is the female version which was done by the same director. UltraViolet... Man that one is a doosey!

 

+1

[Bolognas 32]

This gem was recommended to me by Netflix when I had finished watching In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale. It takes place in a distopian future, where, in order to prevent war, all emotion has been eliminated by a drug that everyone must take or be put to death. Christian Bale is the best of an elite government force trained in "gun-kata," which is karate + guns. As stupid as gunkata sounds, it's ten times stupider than that when put into action. The middle of the movie isn't as chalk full of baffling hilarity as I would have liked, but the opening sequence is hilarious, and the last fifteen minutes or so is worth the wait.

 

If you don't have the patience to sit through this whole movie, do yourself a favor and just watch the big closing action sequences:

They could do a whole show on just this five minutes. Hey, guy behind the pillar, you are not hidden from his view! He can see you!

[Blueman29X 72]

I think that the episode for this would just be an hour of Jason yelling about the part when Christian Bale cuts a guy's face off.

 

Wait. I just got an idea...

 

Face/Off!

[ColinKlein 0]

If you don't have the patience to sit through this whole movie, do yourself a favor and just watch the big closing action sequences:

They could do a whole show on just this five minutes. Hey, guy behind the pillar, you are not hidden from his view! He can see you!

Amen to this, I made an account on the Earwolf forums just to echo this sentiment.

Go vote for in in the FYI: http://fyi.earwolf.com/movie/12894

[Darian 19]

seriously, in light of the Gymkata episode, I need to hear them discuss Gun Kata:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHJAuLmJgvA

[PhillipMedoc 648]

I did not care for this movie at all, but at least -- unlike Gymkata -- they actually did come up with a new style of fighting by combining two existing ways to hurt people. Gunkata would be a pretty bad title, though. The choreography during a couple of the fight scenes, especially the final boss, is pretty good. I just looked up the stunt coordinator's IMDB page; he's done a ton of work for over 20 years, so I suppose that's why.

 

I found it pretty dull, for the most part. Although it is funny that Sean Bean, being Sean Bean, dies in this film.

[Blueman29X 72]

I did not care for this movie at all, but at least -- unlike Gymkata -- they actually did come up with a new style of fighting by combining two existing ways to hurt people. Gunkata would be a pretty bad title, though. The choreography during a couple of the fight scenes, especially the final boss, is pretty good. I just looked up the stunt coordinator's IMDB page; he's done a ton of work for over 20 years, so I suppose that's why.

 

I found it pretty dull, for the most part. Although it is funny that Sean Bean, being Sean Bean, dies in this film.

I think the movie would be about a thousand times better if it was just the last 30 minutes.

[StickyKeys 22]

Just started watching this movie and can see it's already a contender. Human emotion ruins things, so we're going to use drugs and violence to stop that. Also, let's burn some priceless art, mkay?

 

This is not going to end well, lol.

[IHugKittens 53]

Does anyone else here wanna try the drug from this film just to see what it's like? When I saw that film I kept thinking about how I wanna try that drug and also it bugged me that people who've been doing it for their whole lives would not have any withdrawals when they suddenly quit like that. Then I though Okay maybe it's just not addictive but then I thought, wait if the evil government wants everyone to do a drug isn't the best way to achieve that to just make it addictive? I am over analyzing a movie in which Christian Bale uses "gunkata" to defend a dog, that he hid in the truck of his car. He also slices off the front part of a man's head with a katana and it takes that man like a minute to dramatically do a dying pose until the cut off part (which is like half his head) finally falls, slowly sliding down.

[Blueman29X 72]

He also slices off the front part of a man's head with a katana and it takes that man like a minute to dramatically do a dying pose until the cut off part (which is like half his head) finally falls, slowly sliding down.

You forgot to mention that the sword he used to slice his face off strangely doesn't have any blood on it, which leads me to my big question. Was he a robot?

[Darian 19]

Christian Bale uses "gunkata" to defend a dog, that he hid in the truck of his car.

 

is such an amazing description of this movie

[jarrycanada 2483]

Christian Bale almost pulls guns out of his ass in this movie but yet doesn't manage to make a entertaining movie. this was a long stupid movie. Nothing over the top crazy that I can remember but I was half asleep when I watched it. the way he finds clips for those guns is just crazy and they seem to be carefully placed in parts that they shouldn't. I think I am getting too old for these kinda mindless shoot them ups.

 

To me the sword fighting was the best part of the movie yet it was still boring as hell.

[Blueman29X 72]

Christian Bale almost pulls guns out of his ass in this movie but yet doesn't manage to make a entertaining movie. this was a long stupid movie. Nothing over the top crazy that I can remember but I was half asleep when I watched it. the way he finds clips for those guns is just crazy and they seem to be carefully placed in parts that they shouldn't. I think I am getting too old for these kinda mindless shoot them ups.

I don't know how, but the movie drains all of the fun and energy out of action scenes. There's this one part that sticks out to me, which is when towards the end of the movie, Christian Bale kills 30 guys with his gunkata, yet it feels really dull and dry because the scene is just him doing the same thing over and over. I keep bringing up the face removal, because it's probably the best part in the whole movie. Unfortunately, it feels horribly out of place with the rest of the movie (I think I actually laughed out loud when I saw it).

[Joven 373]

So I just watched Winters Tale, and the acting in that made me think of this.

 

Also, I went and took some of the gunkata and related scenes, with iriff commentary, into a little best of kinda thingy (contains spoilers, but who the crap cares.)

 

 

There's effectively one gunkatist in the whole world, maybe 2 if you include the leader, and gunkata is of course best effective when people are conveniently encircling you and they all have terrible aim. The opening door surfing action scene where it's supposed to show how cool it is just has our hero standing stock still and flailing around his arms with whooshing noises and killing a bunch of people with ak47s who forgot how to shoot,

 

No one is good at anything in this movie, the resistance isn't good at resisting, the people yearning to feel emotions can't emote, the people suppressing emotions can't not emote, the schemers aren't that good at scheming, our hero isn't good at basically anything he does that doesn't involve murder.

 

The bad guys main enforcer who went to the Darth Maul school of forgetting how to sword, the failed attempt to be emotionless by everyone involved, the creepy annoying kid, the stupid plot holes (either Bale is a xanatos level planner, or the gun switching scheme was put in after the fact and no one bothered to even try having it make sense), etc.

[DrFancyPants 13]

YESSSSSS! I won't deny the flick had a pretty good cast, which alone should make people wonder why they signed up for this project, but the story itself is ridiculous, the flick couldn't even follow it's own logic.

 

For a world that's on super Ritalin and supposedly devoid of all emotion there sure is a lot of screaming & running.. and style.

 

and Gunkata... oh snap, that's like the 8 year old ADHD nephew to Gymkata! There's seriously multiple fight sequences in the movie where Bale drops into the middle of at least a dozen armed baddies in a closed room with none of them being more than a couple of paces away but none of them can even graze the guy with a bullet, meanwhile he's mowing them down, he's evne able to do it from behind his back! AMAZING!

 

Plus Wimmer, wow! that's a guy who should never be allowed to direct again, at least with his scripts they can do some punch up but he's been pulled from 2 directing gigs mid-project, that really says something!

 

It's seriously like someone looked at 1984 and said this needs to be shinier, more sterile, and should have kung fu but with guns!

 

I'd also like to toss in that I rented this flick because everyone told me how much I'd love it because I'm a fan of Dark City. Well, during the last 30 minutes my wife looked at me and said "this is the crappiest flick you've ever rented" and she was right!

[Joven 373]

Just cause youtube apparently blocked the video i put up:

 

 

So Bale is supposed to be able to tell when people are feeling, and as we find out the 3rd conciliatory tetragrammaton councilman whatsisface, who was previously emoting up a storm but you can easily be forgiven as thinking it was just bad acting, does feel, a lot, flagrantly right in front of Bale in many scenes...so whats his deal? I guess he wants power and thats neat, but having your emotions in that world must suck anyway because along with joy, love, etc you get boredom...and if the movie is anything to go by, he must have been bored stiff all day every day. Maybe thats why he's such a dick?

 

He's supported by 'the council' as the new Father, do they know he's feeling? Do they care? Are they the Intel workers who photoshop his face away in public service announcements? Why bother keeping the 'Father' continuity, if latching onto a figure of devotion like that is an emotional thing? God this movie is stupid.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

I kind of categorize this movie with Boondock Saints*, in that they are both action movies released around the same time that, despite little to no theatrical release, gained a huge cult following in high school and college-aged males. A remarkable accomplishment, seeing as both are remarkably stupid (or maybe that's part of their appeal?). Many-a college dorm conversation was had pertaining to why these films should not be viewed as good. At least Equilibrium has the decency to have some cool choreography and an attempt at some stylistic flourishes, while Boondock Saints has neither... and has the added bonus of being morally repugnant.

 

*The Boondock Saints is clearly fodder for HDTGM itself. If anyone needs evidence of this, the bizarre documentary on its writer/director Troy Duffy, entitled Overnight, is a chronicle of Hollywood douchery to befuddle anyone. It's not great filmmaking, but it does show Duffy to be an astonishing asshole.