Film To Watch: Equilibrium
Holy Mother of Zeus - “Equilibrium” is one cool SOB of a film! The Cool Shite podcast put me onto it this morning. It sounded so cool that I went out and hired it straight away and watched the first half during my workout at lunchtime and the rest tonight. Maaaaaan! Christian Bale is one bad-ass in this film. Writer-Director Kurt Wimmer made one cool flick but it was buried at the box office (only took $1.2 million in the US) and apparently it had good international sales so Miramax pulled it from the cinemas and sent it to DVD.
Stunning cinematography by Queenslander Dion Beebe.
Imagine a world in the future, after WW3, where the architecture is all done by Albert Speer, the clothing all designed by people obsessed with “The Matrix” and Bruce Lee’s costumes in “Fist Of Fury”, and the artifacts are all designed by Apple. A world where all forms of feeling have been outlawed (to prevent anger, jealousy and, therefore, another world war) and a drug called “Prozium” is mandated by a Fascist government and is taken by the entire population four times a day. A world where an elite fighting force, trained in “gun katas”, annhilate anyone who doesn’t take Prozium and is a “sense offender”.
A world where… well just a world that is freakin’ cool. That world is envisioned in “Equilibrium”.
WATCH IT.
Postscript: I just watched the film again with Kurt Wimmer’s commentary on. Maaaan. One of the great commentaries. I love a director who not only explains casting and directing choices, but also is self-critical enough to reveal flaws in the film and scenes that he doesn’t think worked. Thanks, Kurt, for a very enjoyable commentary! I was interested to learn that the film was actually shot in Berlin and the Speer-like architecture IS actually Speer’s architecture!
Despite the flaws (mostly due to budget retraints) in the film, it shows a fresh vision and contains new ideas (eg. the “gun kata”) that reveals a writer-director willing to invent new cinematic ideas. That’s rare these days.
June 10th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Equilibrium was a very cool flick. In fact, to me, it was the best up-to-date action version of Fahrenheit 451.
Also, it has Sean Bean, who played Boromir in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
June 10th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
On the subject of Commentary tracks, have you watched the one for Finding Nemo (you have kids, I am sure you have it)? Personally I thought it was great. It was a sort of Commentary track and deleted scenes in one. They showed early story boards and how they orginially where going to have the story run.
If you haven’t done it (and like the Pixar movies, like me), do yourself a favour (to quote my name sake).
Molly
June 13th, 2005 at 3:49 pm
Chris: yeah Sean Bean, and it was GREAT to see him out of character as well! Used to seeing him as the bad guy (screw LOTR, god how I hated those films). Good to see him as the good guy.
Molly: yeah NEMO is around here somewhere, but havent listened to the commentary, so thanks for the tip off!