Basically it’s set in modern times. The govornment controls society to be exactly like it was in the 50s. Citizens are kept naive and dumb. And they are spied on by the govt through their TVs and the like.
The hero of the film shows signs of unusual intelligence, suspects things aren’t quite as they seem. Govt notices this and pulls this guy out of the society to work for them… but he rebels and blows open the whole facade.
For some reason I think Sean Austin was the main character, but I’m sure the film is too old for him to have been the character
The film you’re looking for is Harrison Bergeron. It’s based on a Kurt Vonnegut story. It was a 1995 made for cable film.
Part of it was filmed at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus, where I went to school back in the early 1980s. I didn’t know this when I first saw the film. Given the subject matter of the film, it was weird to see the school as the setting.
It is Harrison Bergeron. I had no idea it’s name was the name of the character. I thought it’d have had a more ‘generic’ film name for that style of film.