Equilibrium - C-

2002, 107 minutes, Rated R

Few things are as obnoxious as mindless, CGI-laden sci-fi/fantasy babble covered with a pretentious veneer of religion and philosophy. I suppose we have the Wachowski brothers to thank for the most recent offenders, but the tradition starts much earlier than Matrix 2 (I think the original has interesting things to say philosophically, though, ironically, it was the hodgepodge of religious imagery that got the Christian fanboys so buzzed). As a mix between Fahrenheit 451 and a half-dozen better dystopic films, Equilibrium, the brainchild of writer/director Kurt Wimmer (Ultraviolet), is as bad as it gets.
It’s post-WWIII and the presiding fascist government (the Tetragrammatron) has determined that warfare and violence are a product of the human ability to feel, so they have developed a required drug that curtails human emotions. Meanwhile, possession of art and literature is strictly forbidden and punishable by death. These laws are enforced by men known as clerics, of which Christian Bales’ Errol Partridge and Taye Diggs’ Brandt are two. Following the execution of a partner, Bales’ character begins to feel things and, surprisingly, determines to take down the Tetragrammatron, it’s presiding leader “The Father”, thereby freeing humans to feel again.

I’m assuming the screenplay read better than the film since Bale, Diggs, Sean Beam (Boromir in The Lord of the Rings) and Emily Watson (In America) were all lured to the cast. The fight scenes, of which there are plenty, look like second-rate Matrix outtakes. Unfortunately, unlike in The Matrix in which the fighting makes a level of sense if you buy into the film (that nothing is happening in the real world; therefore, the traditionally laws of physics don’t have to apply if you’re programmed for them not to), there’s no posited reason why these fights are possible or work to advance the film. This would be forgivable if the film admitted it was mindless fun and did not position itself as a high-minded critique of Christianity. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The imagery of the Tetragrammatron is lifted straight from the third Reich. In the red, black and white flag, the Swastika has been replaced with a cross. What’s more, Tetragrammatron is the scholarly word for the four-letter proper name of the Jewish/Christian god as it appears in Hebrew (usually translated Yahweh). With the defenders of the government named “clerks” and the leader named “father” (not to mention the countless visual allusions to Catholicism and Cathedrals), there’s no doubt that Wimmer views his work as an anti-Christian tract. But what’s he saying? That the church doesn’t let people feel anything and attacks the arts while embracing the sciences? Not much teeth there. C-