Please don't spend money on this.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Post "Matrix-y" moves but done well. A brooding Christian Bale shows us his prelim to Batman but it all works here.

This movie's high rating made me set up an account to review this title. It is cheap, a blatant matrix clone sprinkled with ideas from dystopian novels/movies and poorly acted; Brent Spiner's portrayal of Data in ST:TNG puts everyone into place here. A society without feelings yet everyone displays feelings from the very get go? A score which is an obvious rip-off of The Matrix? Fight scenes which look like a college student's attempt to recreate said title? Countless plot holes, etc. Don't get me wrong, if you're here for the action, able to switch off and just enjoy another b-movie sci-fi flic with a-listed actors then you can't go wrong here. As a standalone attempt though, this soon should be forgotten.

What a sorry state of affairs we have when perhaps younger viewers don't know enough about the classics of their genre. This makes it easy for pretentious writers and movie makers to churn out cheap copies of prestigious works by Orwell, Bradury, etc and 'almost' get away with it! Thankfully the box office returns reveal the truth in the final count. The great intelligent stories by acclaimed writers that this moronic near 'parody' tries to rip off deserve respect - but Equilibrium simply offers up a mix of serious plagiarizing and childish special effects. Those who like comics will enjoy this tosh, others will be totally let down. Surprising how IMDb seemed to get this one so wrong - I don't often agree with Rotten Tomatoes but this time they got it right - sign of the times? - the future goes backwards...

By now, dystopian societies where people are not allowed to feel for the greater good is no longer a new concept. This movie came out 14 years ago though, so I can only assume it was pretty new back then.Still, having that in mind, it was not very entertaining. Some plot twists made no sense while others were predictable, and there were situations where the main character put himself that there is absolutely no chance he could not get caught in such a society. He was allowed to do those things for much too long, for the sake of the narrative evolving to where it did. Even the new sort of martial art of fighting/shooting was quite beautiful and yet there is no way trained soldiers would just wait in line to be shot like that.Equilibrium presents itself as a blend of Fahrenheit 451 and The Matrix and if you are big on action movies you will probably enjoy it. As I mentioned, some scenes really are capable of dazzling you. However, I do felt the plot could have been polished much, much more and in the end it was just another cool sci-fi, action movie. Extra points for the newness of the concept at the time and Bale's performance, but that's about it.