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75Would be a mindless action picture, except that it has a mind. It doesn't do a lot of deep thinking, but unlike many futuristic combos of sf and f/x, it does make a statement:
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70The fun here is not so much in the solid if stolid performances from Bale and co-stars Taye Diggs and Emily Watson (gussied up to resemble the Jefferson Airplane–era Grace Slick) or in Wimmer's overpolished plot devices as it is in the production values.
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70A terrific cast, stylish direction, and elegantly choreographed mayhem help make it far better than it might have been -- Though ultimately silly, Equilibrium's shopworn but stylish synthesis of ammo and ideas is surprisingly engrossing.
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63The martial-arts sequences take this prosaic thriller to a higher level.
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60Equilibrium improves as it rolls along -- either that or, ironically, it wears down the senses until the viewer succumbs.
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50Not a picture that makes you think very much -- except to wonder why the studios keep making movies like this.
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50Mostly plays like a routine thriller with a classy cast.
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50The best thing about Equilibrium is its impressive look. Along with its generally fine cast and some well-choreographed fights, that goes a long way to making the movie watchable -- despite its underlying stupidity.
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50A preachy parable stylized with a touch of John Woo bullet ballet.
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50Just because it's a good idea doesn't mean it's easy to do well. Screenwriter-turned-director Kurt Wimmer has a hard time keeping his actors from, well, acting a lot of the time.
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40Flashy, "MATRIX"-style action sequences trump ideas; it's hard not to feel you've just watched a feature-length video game with some really heavy back story.
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40This operates at the intellectual level of the old "Star Trek" in its limp last season, and the professed humanism is belied by the extreme violence and Nazi-chic production design (not to mention a voice-over that traces the outlawing of emotion to "the revolutionary precept of the hate crime").
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38Equilibrium just happens to be a really bad comic book.
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38It's not only an ultraviolent, ludicrously inconsistent rip-off of Bradbury's idea, but it poisons the well for future efforts.
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30An accidental entertainment, Equilibrium is a science-fiction pastiche so lacking in originality that if you stripped away its inspirations there would be precious little left.
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25Super- violent, super-serious and super-stupid.
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25Equilibrium doesn't tread softly on our dreams; it tramples them.
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20Since Equilibrium shamelessly rips off every Orwellian science fiction thriller in film history, what other reason is there besides sheer desperation for the film to be so stupidly violent?
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20Misses with its blowhard treatment of a silly, obvious script. Results might hazard "Battlefield Earth" comparison if new pic were a tad more fun.
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10As this clueless, bulimic debacle madly regurgitates ideas and iconography from Lang to the brothers Wachowski, Leni Riefenstahl to L. Ron Hubbard, Ray Bradbury to Susan Faludi, it's not just Bale who has a hard time keeping a straight face.
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10Equilibrium is like a remake of "1984" by someone who's seen "The Matrix" 25 times while eating Twinkies and doing methamphetamines.
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0If someone left "1984," "Fahrenheit 451," "Brave New World," "Gattaca" and the Sylvester Stallone potboilers "Judge Dredd" and "Demolition Man" out in the sun and threw the runny glop onto a movie screen, it would still be a better picture than Equilibrium, a movie that could be stupider only if it were longer.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 105 out of 118
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Mixed: 1 out of 118
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Negative: 12 out of 118
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Sandund10
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MarkusW10
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RyanJ.10