Equilibrium (2002 movie) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
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.
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2 Cast & Crew 3 Gun Kata 4 External links |
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 where all citizens are required to take regular "intervals" of the drug Prozium, 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. A special order of police trained in the deadly martial art of gun kata, the Grammaton Clerics, exists for the purpose of locating and destroying EC-10 materials, and of pursuing, apprehending, and (as necessary) terminating "sense-offenders," those guilty of feeling. 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 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 First Class Partridge, has personally taken a copy of the poems of Yeats; he subsequently 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), in whose collection he finds a recording of Beethoven to which he reacts violently.
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 the Tetragrammaton's representative, Vice Counsel DuPont, 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 himself, "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 "tread carefully, for you are treading on my dreams." Preston bests DuPont in a close-quarters pistol fight, and DuPont demands to know if Preston is prepared to bear the price of killing another feeling human being. Preston assures DuPont that he pays it gladly, and shoots him.
Tagline: In a future where freedom is outlawed outlaws will become heroes.
Story
Cast & Crew
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 can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy in any given combat situation.