 DVD case cover for Equilibrium, US version Equilibrium is an action-filled science-fiction film set in the future. Similarities to classic dystopian novels such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World are evident.
Story
Equilibrium is set in the year 2072, after civilization has been rebuilt following World War III. Believing that emotion is responsible for "man's inhumanity to man," the leaders of those who survived the war banned all materials deemed likely to stimulate strong emotions in human beings, including art, music, and literature (these materials are rated "EC-10" for "emotional content" and typically destroyed by immediate incineration). An orderly society is built behind the walls of the city-state of Libria, a negative Utopian city-state. All citizens are required to take regular injections - "intervals" - of a liquid drug Prozium, collected at one or more distribution centers called Equilibrium, which suppresses strong emotions like grief, rage, joy, and love. The loss of emotions is a heavy price, but it is considered to be one paid gladly in exchange for the elimination of war and crime.
The government of this society is called the Tetragrammaton, and is led by the reclusive Father, who never interacts with anyone outside the ruling council, but whose image is practically omnipresent throughout the city in a strong cult of personality. The Tetragrammaton strives to create identical lives for all Librians, and uses its police state apparatus to enforce unity and conformity; nevertheless, there is a formal procedure of "processing" and trial pursued via the Palace of Justice prior to terminating enemies of the state (except in the case of unidentified persons, subject to summary destruction). The Grammaton Clerics, a special order of police trained in the deadly martial art of gun kata, exists for the purpose of locating and destroying EC-10 materials, and for pursuing, apprehending, and (as necessary) terminating "sense-offenders," people guilty of feeling emotions. Somewhere, either in the city itself or in the no man's land outside it ("the Nethers"), there is a resistance movement against the Tetragrammaton, responsible for terrorist activity against the state, targeted specifically against the prozium supply.
The film's protagonist, Grammaton Cleric First Class John Preston, is Libria's highest ranking Grammaton Cleric, whose success stems from his intuitive ability to identify sense-offenders. After a raid on a group of art collectors which ends with the destruction of the Mona Lisa, Preston notices that his partner, Grammaton Cleric First Class Errol Partridge, has personally taken a copy of the poems of Yeats; on discovering that Partridge has not turned the book over for destruction, he follows him to a burnt-out church in the nethers, where Partridge talks of the loss of everything that makes them human. When Preston argues that emotions lead to jealousy and murder, Partridge calls it a heavy price... but he pays it gladly. Preston summarily executes Partridge for sensecrime, just after Partridge cautions him to "tread softly, for you are treading on my dreams." Shortly thereafter, he accidently misses his morning interval of Prozium, and begins to experience strong emotions; his confusion is exacerbated by his encounter with sense-offender Mary O'Brien (Partridge's lover), and by various unrelated incidents, including his exposure to Beethoven, dawn in Libria, and a puppy. Over the course of the film, Preston's behavior increasingly mirrors that of Partridge in the beginning, even to the point of repeated dialogue.
Soon, Preston is involved in increasingly illegal activities, going so far as to kill a number of the Tetragrammaton's police forces. At the same time, he tells "Father's Voice," Vice-Counsel DuPont of the Third Conciliation of the Tetragrammaton, that he is attempting to infiltrate the Resistance in order to destroy it. DuPont tells him that he has heard rumors of a cleric attempting to join the Resistance (a reference to Preston's own unreported activities), and Preston promises to find this traitor. After O'Brien's execution in Libria's furnaces, Preston himself is arrested for sensecrime by his new partner, Brandt, but manages to talk his way out of it, casting Brandt as the sense-offender responsible for the deaths of a patrol in the Nethers (which Preston himself actually killed). DuPont orders Brandt's immediate judgement and execution, and Preston soon delivers the leaders of the Resistance; he intends to triple-cross the Tetragrammaton by killing Father during his congratulatory audience, and help the Resistance to destroy the Tetragrammaton's Prozium supply.
It is soon revealed that Brandt's execution was a ruse, and Father has known all along about Preston's sensecrimes; indeed, it was all planned from the beginning, in order to destroy the Resistance once and for all. Preston finds himself unable to understand how Father could have possibly known that he was feeling, when Father has never even met him; Father laughs: It has been DuPont the entire time, and the real Father had died years before. He mocks Preston as the "savior of the Resistance" who has in fact destroyed it, and unwittingly turned himself in, "entirely without incident." Preston assures him that the incident was not in fact "without incident," and kills the entire protective detail in the Tetragrammaton headquarters before finding DuPont in his sanctum, a richly decorated office revealing that DuPont himself is a sense-offender. After Preston kills Brandt and DuPont's bodyguards, DuPont again warns Preston to be careful, "you are treading on my dreams" (mirroring the earlier death of Partridge). Preston bests DuPont in a close-quarters pistol fight, and DuPont demands to know if Preston is prepared to bear the heavy price of killing another feeling human being. Preston assures DuPont that he pays it gladly, and shoots him.
Gun Kata
Gun Kata is a fictitious gun-fighting martial arts discipline that features as part of the movie. Gun Kata is based upon the premise that the positions and actions of antagonists are generally the same in any given combat situation. The different movements and positions learnt through Gun Kata are designed to give the student the best average cover of fire in any of these situations.
Tagline: In a future where freedom is outlawed outlaws will become heroes.
Cast & Crew
External links
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