Equilibrium
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.79 You Save: $9.20 (61%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.38 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Equilibrium
Movie Review: What reloaded should have been
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved the original Matrix and violently hated Reloaded because of how good the original was. The load of philosophical mumbo jumbo in Reloaded made we want to run for the exits. Any movie where it has to spend long sections explaining itself...well it has issues. Talk about taking itself too seriously. For fans, read the Philosophy of the Matrix, let's you appreciate all the subtle nuances of the original.So I had an extreme "Matrix" void, with all the expectations I had waiting for the $300M sequel, that never got satisfied...until Equilibrium. I agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the reviews that I've read so far on this thread, so I'll try to add to it.
This movie was emotionally powerful. I had wanted to see more movies with Emily Watson after I saw her performance in Punch Drunk Love. Equilibrium is an excellent love story. In fact, the director said in the DVD that Equilibrium actually tested better with women than men.
For those who haven't seen the movie I might ruin some of the best parts with what I'm about to say, so stop here.
I can't remember the last time I saw a movie where the protagonist doesn't successfully rescue the damsel in distress. When Christian Bale failed to rescue Emily Watson from termination, I was devasted. Greek tragedies are so rarely a Hollywood friendly script. I also can't remember the last time I emotionally flipped my view of a character from the son of Christian Bale who most likely reported his mother as a sense offender to his later action to actually save his father from being found out as a sense offender. Wow, I was also floored.
Like many, I had issues with some of the low budget aspects of the film but after you get engrossed (and you will be) in the plot you forget the superficial aspects, like enjoying an episode of Dr Who. Lastly, the fact that no one knows about the film and it has been a real find has really enhanced it's appeal to me. Blade Runner was never mainstream when it first came out and it was a financial flop. It existed as a fringe cult film for the longest time. I was one of the people who lined up to see all the director's cuts of it when it was first re-released to a limited audience in San Francisco.
This was a wonderful film and is definitely one of my favorites. I so rarely see movies more than once and most movies I wish I didn't see the first time. However, I continued to review Equilibrium every day 2-3 times until I had to return it...I guess I should buy it.
Movie Review: Kurt Wimmer Shines
Summary: 5 Stars
Christian Bale and Taye Diggs did a fantastic job in this movie and we can't forget the commanding scenes with Sean Bean and Emily Watson in the film. I think Christian Bale proved in this film that he was ready to be Batman. It was in a sense a feature length introduction
At the end of the day though this movie is Kurt Wimmer's. He's a very experienced playwright. He demonstrated that he can write an engaging story that has developed almost a cult following years after the production and release of Equilibrium. As a director, he worked within his budget and came up with all kinds of innovative ideas on how to make the movie shine. His hard work comes across in this movie and I have to applaud him for such talent.
With this directorial debut, he has proven that he can step out of the purely creative chair of writing a play and has demonstrated that he can juggle all of the pieces of a film direction to create on the screen. Its not an easy job that many get wrong. Wimmer gets it right, and he gets it right in a responsible and hard working fashion very unlike many new directors who simply look through the lens and accept what's there. Wimmer is the opposite. He puts what he needs into the screen and he considers what it will cost him to put a certain effect into the screen and when he needs to conserve budget, he comes up with an interesting trick - like simply having the muzzle lights light a scene: very unique and interesting.
The story is strong from a science fiction standpoint. Think Farenheit 451 plus the Matrix all mixed into one but without the gigantic budget of the Matrix. The director and crew had to work here to take a small budget and stretch it. The studio probably gave him Christian Bale who was a rising star and needed a movie like this and a modest budget and Wimmer had to make it work - and he did wonderfully.
Not only that, this movie has a great cult following. It would be great to see another Kurt Wimmer directed movie. I wonder what he could produce with a larger budget?
If you're a student of Art and movies, see this movie - you'll see the hard work.
If you're a fan of Christian Bale, Sean Bean, Emily Watson, or Tye Diggs -- this is a great B budget movie that elevates itself to A status through its tremendous actors, original story, and extremely hard work by a director who is taking the director's chair for the first time.
Movie Review: One word: Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is so good, that I bought it on amazon within the hour that I first saw it. I've never done that with any movie. In many ways, Equilibrium is better then its cgi-filled counterpart the matrix. Where the matrix takes you on a completly si-fi journey into the distant future, equilibrium takes you to a future that could happen. The main question the auddience is asked when seeing this movie is this: Would you give up all the highs of human emotion to supress the terrible lows of human emotion? I've asked that question to many of my friends and it makes them want to see this movie.
The cast of this film is nothing short of amazing. Christian Bale is amazing as the main protaginist John Preston. Sean Bean has a very small role in this film as Preston's partner but that doesn't diminish how important he is. He sets the tone for the film. The person I was most amazed at was Matt Harbour who plays Robbie Preston, John's son. His acting is very good for someone his age and I fully expect to hear his name in the future.
The plot of the film is what I love most. For those who have read "The Giver" this film is very similar. Its set in the no-so-distant future, after a third world war in which mankind is devestated. The survivors turn to a government called Libria, which is led by a myserious figure known only as "father". The leaders of Libra promise the people peace, and freedom in exchange for some god-given freedoms (sound familiar america?). This freedom is emotion which is taken away through regualar shots of a drug called prozium. A law enforcement group called the grammaton claric is formed to find and destroy anything that can make a person feel, called EC-10 by the government. Preston is the hightest ranking cleric and master of a form of combat known as "gun-kata". But after being forced to kill his partner and close friend (Bean) Preston begins to question if the utobia that surrounds him is really that.
The Gun-kata is one of the things that separates equilibrium from the matrix. It provids amazing fight scenes that require little to no CGI.
The soundtrack is truly inspiring. Each song fits its scene perfectly and turns the movie from being good to great. It can make you cry one second and make you want to go out kick someones butt the next.
In conclusion, this is a must-see film. Anyone over 17 will love this film end of story.
Movie Review: Great story with a new kind of action.
Summary: 5 Stars
Should be on the list of the best 100 science fiction movies ever. No exaggeration. If Hollywood spent more time promoting movies like this and less time promoting junk, we wouldn't be suffering through the two sequels to the Matrix. I enjoyed this movie so much when I saw it on satellite, I went out and bought the DVD. I had the total displeasure of watching Star Trek Nemesis this year. (That dud should be on the list of worst movies ever.) But here's a movie that shows what a science fiction movie should be. An innovative, action-packed movie that is story and character centered. The action in this movie is something I've never seen before. It was like the director (who also wrote the script) created a new form of martial arts. I viewed it with an adult female and a teenager, and we all enjoyed it.
Me, I enjoy a good story. You could put a ton of effects and all the actors in the world, but if there's no story--like in the Matrix Sequels, the latest Star Trek movies, or any of George Lucas's recent Star Wars bombs--then I either shut if off or walk out the theater. So far there have only been a few good sci-fi movies that stand out: The Core, Spiderman, and this movie, to name a very few, and I bought all three. Meanwhile, I didn't even bother watching the last Star Wars movie when it came out on satellite.
I remember the director of The Core saying something that I've been saying for years, only he said it better, "Movies today have been hijacked by special effects." He went on to say how he wanted his actors to be the focus of the movie; and what he created was a movie where you cared for the characters. And that's also what happened in this movie.
At first you think the story is sort of ridiculous, I mean a society where having feelings is a crime; but then I thought about some of the wacky stuff going on today and how the government is in every facet of our lives, and then I thought it's not that ridiculous after all. For example, do you think someone even 50 years ago would ever imagine schools would put in metal detectors to check kids for guns?
Oh, and no wire tricks in this movie, thank God. If I see one more actor doing an acrobatic kick or jump that defies physics, I think I'd go beyond migraine. And I enjoyed the central character so much, I'm going to check out American Psycho. Okay, enough praise. Check out the movie and see if I was right.
Movie Review: where did this movie come from?
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie had been so hyped up on message boards that I was looking for the ultimate hidden gem with this movie. While I'm not sure it quite stands up the brilliance that is has been described as being, this is a very fine movie. The setting for Equilibrium is after World War III. Having survived three world wars, humanity might not be able to survive a fourth. It was decided that the greatest danger to humanity was humanity itself. More specifically, it was human emotion that drove men to war. To ensure that no war or murder would ever happen again, emotion was suppressed. Every man, woman, and child had to daily take medication to suppress emotion. There was no more murder (excepting the state sponsored kind), and feeling was a crime...called a sense crime. A new agency was put into place to enforce the sense laws. These men were known as clerics.Christian Bale plays John Preston, the highest ranking cleric in the city/state. It is his job to hunt down the sense offenders in the city. We see Preston going about his job (violently at times) until he captures a sense offender named Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson). Mary seems to remind Preston of his own wife (a sense offender, herself) and it is at this point when we see John Preston take an interest in feeling, and in the forbidden objects (music, most vestiges of the past). You can guess where the movie goes from there. This could be an excellent novel is the story was fleshed out a little bit.
The main aspect of this film that will draw in viewers is the action. It is intense and at times unbelievable. But, during the course of the story, we are told how such a thing is possible...and this helps more than one might think. Not only do we believe that John Preston can pull off this action, we believe that with the proper training we also are capable of the same. The gun battles are almost a dance, they are that well done, and I don't know how to describe some of the fight sequences. In particular, there is a gun battle where the guns are almost used as swords where one mistake can end the battle....simply beautiful.
It seems that every science fiction movie will bear comparisons to The Matrix. This is entirely unfair and absurd. This movie is different than the Matrix, not necessarily better or worse. It has its own style and is an excellent movie in its own right.