Equilibrium - 2002

A strange movie, I had never heard about it. It was a bit painful honestly, but interesting and gripping enough. It had a few very fast action-scenes, then everything else was very very slow. It was right, though, it had to be. I mean, it's nothing fantastic, but it's not bad, it's a good movie based entirely on Christian Bale's performance, I'd say. The camera is always on his face. It's all based on repression, silences and emotions. Basically, to get rid of violence and war this society took away emotions completely: no emotions=no anger, no envy, no ambition, no fights and no wars. It worked, but nobody can really enjoy this peace of course, because nobody has emotions anymore, no feelings at all. At specific hours during the day each person has to take a special medicine, inject themselves with a drug that erases emotions completely. Naturally, since humans are humans, although there are no wars there is a special forces corp and a lot of killings in the name of the law. This special "soldiers" are called "clerics" and are sent out to find and kill everyone who doesn't take the drug and therefore "feels".
We immediately know John (Christian Bale) and his partner Partridge (Sean Bean). We learn that John's wife was arrested and executed for the crime of feeling emotions, and John himself kills his partner when he catches him reading a book of poems. Every colour is forbidden, poems and books, music and pictures, paintings and even pets, everything connected with emotions is destroyed. John has a son and a daughter, and he also teaches them his emotionless belief. One morning he accidentally breaks his medicine and doesn't rush to acquire another dose. He immediately starts to feel different. Simply touching a wall with his bare hands is something new, and once he started feeling, he couldn't stop. He began to hide his drugs, but now doing his job became more and more difficult each day. To watch people getting killed by his "colleagues" affects him now, he stops his new partner (Taye Diggs) from killing a woman and becomes emotionally involved. On one occasion he tries to save a bunch of people, he even kills the other non-cleric guards to try and save them, but he couldn't. Other guards killed a whole lot of people trying to protect some dogs. After the people it was the dogs' turn. One of them escaped and John caught him and looked at him. Just imagine one of the cutest little puppies staring at you and licking you. Without the drug obviously John couldn't resist it and had to protect him. He took it away, then went out at night to set it free, but the cute little thing would not leave him so he put it in the car again, and gave it his jacket to make it more comfortable. At that moment patrol guards stop him: he tries to save the situation but it was a desperate attempt. I'm a senior cleric! Then show us your documents. They're in my jacket! Where's your jacket?
Now, he could not tell them it was in the car because they would have seen the dog too, so he kept lying. It was a very bad situation, but then he was recognized and John nearly hoped to make it out of it easily. And then the dog barked. John killed all the guards, and saved himself and the puppy.
He was contacted by the underground rebels: they recruited him to kill the Father, the city boss, and he accepted.
The woman he arrested and then fell for is scheduled to be executed. He did nothing when it happened to his wife, but now he's different and tries to save her but can't. When he ha his first meeting ever with the boss, he discovers two things: one, he was found out and used to get to the rebels, and two the boss died some time ago but it was kept a secret and now another man is the leader, a man who "feels", like him, but different things I'd say. John won't let him taking him down without a fight; he kills all the guards, then all his personal guards and also his 'partner' who was actually sent to him to spy on him. Finally face to face with the boss, they fight and they're both good. John wins though, and the other one tries to plead to his sentiments, explaining that he feels emotions too, he's one of them, would John still kill him after knowing that? Well, John had seen the woman he loved burn to death in front of him, so yeah, he would.
After that all the rebels come out. They know the right time because after killing the leader John also destroyed all the videos, computers that kept broadcasting the Father's propaganda to the People. The rebels starts fires and fights in the city. The heart of the plan was that they would stop the drugs, nad it was enough that people would stop taking it once for nature to win and change everything.
I was glad they didn't do what I feared: his son did not spy on him. No, instead he helped him hiding the drugs he did not take when the guards inspected the house. Brother and sister had stop taking it since their mother did, and just pretended ever since. At the end, hearing the explosions, they smile :-) and the puppy is with the little girl :-)
I don't know, it was a strange movie, different, but it did get to me.