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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, December 6, 2002

At the Movies: 'Equilibrium'

By Christy Lemire
AP Entertainment Writer

 •  "Equilibrium," a Dimension Films release, is rated R for violence. Running time: 107 minutes. One star out of four.
Emotions are prohibited in the futuristic society of "Equilibrium."

Apparently, creativity, wit or finesse are, too.

Writer-director Kurt Wimmer bandies about ideas of freedom of thought and expression, and the production notes insist that he based the film "on his own original vision of a sci-fi world."

But he's simply crossed "Fahrenheit 451" with "The Matrix," then stripped away the substance of the former and the style of the latter. What's left is loud and crude, but occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, merely for its sheer ridiculousness.

It's remarkable, however, in its ability to render the gorgeous, charismatic Taye Diggs completely boring.

Diggs and Christian Bale co-star as "clerics" — ubercops in the nation of Libria, where there are no wars because its inhabitants take daily doses of Prozium, a drug that prevents them from experiencing emotion.

Brandt (Diggs) and Preston (Bale) seek out and destroy "sense offenders" — people who enjoy art, books, music, or anything else that evokes a human response.

This includes puppy dogs, which the heavily armed sensory police shoot to death, simply because they have no idea what else to do with them. (As a dog person, I found this so brutal, I almost walked out at this point.)

Preston catches his partner, Partridge (Sean Bean), reading a collection of Yeats poems and promptly shoots him in the head. Then he accidentally misses a dose of Prozium, and starts feeling his own internal stirrings.

He wakes up every morning and stashes away his doses behind the medicine cabinet in a minimalist apartment that looks like the same place Bale's "American Psycho" character lived. (These people may not be able to feel anything, but they like cool furniture.)

Preston becomes vulnerable just as he arrests Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson), a rebel who lives in a shabby-chic underground hideout, and has beautiful blue eyes, and smells good.

He promises Dupont (Angus MacFayden), the smarmy mouthpiece for the nation's leader, Father, that he's diligently ridding Libria of people like Mary. But Preston's new partner, the ambitious Brandt, suspects that he's weakening and tries to sabotage his career.

(If you stop to think about it, though, wouldn't Brandt have to feel something to be ambitious? Jealousy, for example, or desire? Diggs flashes only a tiny part of his megawatt smile, but it's enough to indicate that his character is enjoying watching Preston struggle.)

Anyway, this sets up a bunch of over-the-top, slow-motion shootouts in which Preston takes out 20 guys at once, all of whom stand there and wait for him to shoot them, even though they're decked out in head-to-toe riot gear.

Twisting and somersaulting through the air like a Cirque de Soleil understudy, he's Keanu Reeves, with slightly more talent. And dressed in a black overcoat, it looks like he also raided Reeves' "Matrix" wardrobe.

On the web: http://www.dimensionfilms.com/equilibrium/index.html