I had a chance to catch the movie Equilibrium last night and I’d have to say it was a disappointment.
It seemed like there was a good movie inside trying to claw its way out, but it never managed to break through. The story itself was quite relevant to what’s going on in the world today and had a lot of potential, but had some pretty big holes in it, such as:
The head of the resistance said that they had explosives planted on all of the Prozium plants, and if they could knock out the supply for even one day human nature would do the rest. Then why haven’t they done this already?? The resistance guy says that they just can’t execute the plan until Cleric Preston kills Father, which makes no sense, unless they think Father’s influence alone could keep the entire populace in line even without Prozium. But if that was the case, why does the government still force people to take Prozium?
Another was, how/why do people get married and have children without any sort of emotion or feeling at all in the process? Unless all marriages are arranged and children are created through artifical insemination or grown in labs. But if this was the case, why did Preston care in retrospect that his wife was taken from him, if it was a pre-arranged marriage and/or he never loved her anyway? This is the sort of backstory the movie was desperately lacking.
Other than that, the main thing that bothered me about the movie was that the middle hour or so was spent with the same scene repeated over and over again, where Preston is confronted with a situation where innocents are about to be killed and he has to choose whether or not to try to save them, but he just does nothing as they are painfully executed in front of him. Talk about beating the viewer over the head with a plot point. I also think it was funny that Preston watched probably thousands of people get slaughtered in his life, including children, but the thing that finally changes his mind is a puppy. 
But I gotta say, that WAS one damn cute puppy.
Now, the action scenes…you can tell the director really, really, really wanted to make Matrix-like action scenes. I mean, damn, they even tried (and failed) to clone the Matrix trademark gunfight in a big lobby with pillars down the sides, with the pillars getting all shot up. But in general, the actions scenes were just poorly-filmed and not very exciting. How many times can Preston stand in the middle of 6 or 8 guys and spin around in a circle killing them? It was cool the first time, and then the last time when he used the sword, but that was it.
My favorite scenes in the movie were probably the sword scene I just mentioned, and one of the scenes with Preston and the ribbon woman in the interrogation room. She asks him if he feels no emotion, for what does he live? Preston has no real answer, except that he lives to preserve the emotionless, pointless existence of society. Good stuff and, dare I say, profound.
I also must admit that I wasn’t expecting some of the twists. I thought Preston’s kid was gonna be the one who turned him in (even though it was so painfully obvious) and was surprised with how that turned out. Also, I didn’t realize the significance of Preston giving the other cleric his gun back (“In the end, I think it would be better if you had it”) until it was revealed.
Despite all my complaining, I’d have to give the movie maybe…6 out of ten stars because it was entertaining and I didn’t feel like I wasted my money. With a different director, maybe it could have been a classic movie instead of just a mediocre movie with unrealized potential.
Anyway, I’m not very good at playing film critic and the real reason I started this thread is because I want to find out what others thought of the movie. If you’ve seen it, please post your thoughts!