"I'VE GOT AN IDEA FOR A MOVIE - IT'S LIKE '1984' MEETS 'BLADE RUNNER'… BUT TOTALLY SHIT" - review by Stew.

It Is The Near Future. Man's inhumanity to man has wiped out the vast proportion of Earth's populace. Anger is judged to be the root of all evil. Remove anger, there will be no war, no hatred, no suffering. So under the guidance of the omnipotent Father, enforced by the elite police force known as the Clerics, all of society, now gathered beneath the banner of 'Libria', must administer themselves with doses of the chemical 'Prozium' that eliminates anger - but also removes all other trace of human emotion.

What a pile of fucking balls.

Let's get the formalities over with; top Cleric Christian Bale semi-accidentally forgets to take his wacky tablet, develops emotions, goes renegade, there's a few 'Aha! Double cross! No, triple cross! No, quadru… oh just fuck off would you?' moments, then he eventually overthrows the tyrannical rule of the evil Father with the aid of the fucking 'Emotion Underground', (a name I just invented but, trust me, would not be out of place in this freakin' hippy-fest). And that's it. The opening paragraph explains the philosophy, this paragraph tells you what actually happens. Yep, that's pretty much 'Equilibrium' for you. A whole heap of cheap-looking, slightly effete tosh built around the slenderest of storylines, patently ripped off from various literary sources, (Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, et al), that doesn't know if it wants to be a cheap 'Blade Runner', a crap 'Matrix', a shitty 'Fahrenheit 451' or a fucking poor 'Logan's Run', and in turn succeeds in being nowhere near good enough to be even a bad copy of any of the above. Fundamentally, it's an action movie trying to crack on its got a degree, then spectacularly failing to pass its Eleven Plus.

Please - do not spend money on this film. It is bollocks. Let a very stupid friend buy it, then borrow it and fast-forward to the bits with 'Gun-Kata' in; this is a made-up silly martial art involving weaponry, wherein the Clerics are taught the optimum points of attack in your average gun battle, which they then use to effectively dodge bullets whilst simultaneously hitting every target they aim at. Or something. Dunno - looks cool, clearly a pile of old pony if you tried it in real life.

To be fair, the action in this movie far outstrips 'The Matrix Reloaded' for innovation and pure visceral enjoyment, (no bullshit defying-the-laws-of-physics wire-work, no invincible superhumans rucking for 20 minutes the sake of it when they could have just flown away, no 'synthespians', just something that looks groovy and, above all, new); shame every other aspect feels like a really flashy remake of a 70's Sunday afternoon BBC kids serial - like 'Z For Zachariah' directed by Ridley Scott. That whole 'ooooh, anger is bad, take an emotion-dampening tablet and oppress people who just want to, like, love each other and enjoy jazz' thing smells like some patchouli-scented sub-'Tripods' secondary-school-English-teacher idea of a Terrifying Future Made Flesh. Its got that early-to-mid seventies, tail-end-of-hippy 'Silent Running'/'Andromeda Strain'/'Soylent Green' angle - but unlike those movies, 'Equilibrium' isn't a small, kick-arse flick with an issue in its teeth and a hard realistic edge, warning us to shape up or this shit could really happen. It feels, if anything, less plausible than pure fantasy like 'The Matrix', because the whole 'oppression of emotions' thing and the 'war is wrong' philosophy is just kind of hokey in this era - it wants to be deeply philosophical, but just comes off as bleedin' daft in our cultural context. Oh yeah, and if you, like, look at some floral wallpaper, or read poetry, or pat a dog, that's what they call a 'sense offence'. And they shoot you on the spot. Or alternatively, burn you alive in an enormous incinerator. Jesus. It's all so… daft.

The glaring lack of budget also serves to stretch the plausibility of the movie. 'The Forbidden Zone', where the Emotional Musketeers hide out, just looks like an industrial estate; the only time you see The Emotionless City Of The Future in wideshot, it is clearly a matte/CGI painting, and not a very good one; Emotionless Future Law Enforcement officers just wear cheap, 20th century motorcycle helmets; the Emotionless Clothing Of The Future is either an overcoat, or a boilersuit - austere maybe, cheap to buy in bulk definitely. Our jaded film-savvy eyes can just see the cheapness lurking at the edge of every frame, not least with the cast - they're all solid players, (Christian Bale, Sean Bean, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, William Fichtner), but decidedly not top-of-the-A-list material. That shouldn't matter and generally doesn't if the film works on every other level, but in a film of this nature, pitching itself as a big-bang action movie with a heavyweight plot, the stark empty sets with the nearly-well-know actors strolling around in identical clothes don't look cool, they look underfunded. You know every actor in town turned down that script before the cheaper option likes of Bale, Diggs et al got their hands on it - so, lets play a game…

In the big budget version of the movie director Kurt Wimmer probably wanted to make rather than the £20-all-in buffet he ended up churning out, for Christian Bale, read Josh Hartnett or Jude Law. For Taye Diggs, read Samuel L. Jackson, or maybe somebody like, say, Colin Farrell, if we step away from the ethnicity. Sean Bean might've been in it anyway, ('Lord Of The Rings' and all), but I get the sense he signed for this shit-burger pre-career upturn and Wimmer got lucky, or he was forced into doing it as a favour for someone. Emily Watson - probably Emily Watson, whose agents will have positioned her in this on the offchance it was a big hit, seeing as her US stock is on the rise - but she'd have been solid backup for Hartnett and Jackson, rather than just another no-name on this cast list; same with William Fichtner as head of the underground. Its hard to believe that anyone would have chosen to cast Angus MacFadyen as the evil mastermind orchestrating the oppression of society above any other actor in the universe - the sole quality he brings to the role is that of Being Able To Wear A Jacket Well. But hey, they'd spent eighteen quid on Bale and Diggs and another quid on effects, they had to take what they could get with the pennies left rattling around the hat.

As further proof of the whole tin-potted-ness of the entire affair, you need look no further than the fact that the omnipresent face of Father, the leader of this society, who commands nought but unswerving loyalty from his subjects, is played by none other than Sean Fucking Pertwee. For those of you who don't know who Sean Pertwee is, well, that's not surprising. He's in 'Dog Soldiers', 'Event Horizon', erm, 'Soldier'… hang on… oh shit, that awful joyrider flick 'Shopping' and that karaoke gangster turd 'Love Honour & Obey'… er… 'Cold Feet' on telly… oh yeah and he's the son of Jon Pertwee, the second best Doctor Who, perhaps better known to some of you, (certainly better known than his offspring), as Worzel Gummidge. Pertwee Junior's face may not ring a bell, but the voice has shilled everything from orange juice to tampons and back again - he is British TV voiceover man par excellence. So yeah, ideal choice to play the inspiring holographic figurehead of a dystopian futuristic society, basically. Certainly better than, say, Alan Rickman, or Joss Ackland, or Brian Blessed, or Paul Darrow from 'Blake's 7', or bleedin' Leslie Grantham for that matter. Trust me, if Pertwee'd turned 'em down, the next on the list was Ian Wright. And Pertwee only got the call 'cos Joe Pasquale was unavailable.

Think I'm being too flippant? I think not! The role of the librarian who protects the secret entrance to the Emotional Guerilla's hide-out, who takes a pasting from Bale and almost dies for his secret, is played by none other than Brian Conley. Yes, Brian Conley. The faded primetime UK TV comedian, famed for his 'it's a puppet'/pretend stuntman/seaside summer special malarkey for the grannies of a Saturday night. I don't begrudge the bloke a role, he even acquits himself favourably in it, but for the love of fucking Christ, his mere inclusion smacks of diabolical cheapness. As does the fact they mis-spell his surname as 'Connelly' in the end credits.

Anyway, I'm getting way too far up my own arse over this movie; by all means watch it, but don't say I didn't warn you. And don't forget to take your drugs, and no touching any velvet or listening to a gramophone record - that's how wars start, don't you know…