7. Equilibrium
A future where humanity is prevented from feeling, where all art, music, emotions, even puppies are contraband. O.K., Really? Can't I have a damn puppy? Equilibrium had a weird romance with its marketing campaign, only releasing in about 300 theaters in the US. While it wasn't a spectacular performance by anyone involved, I've enjoyed this film at random intervals when it appears on my screen, despite it not really holding up well as a movie. It's dystopian, that's a given, and due to the nature of most of the characters operating without emotion, we do get robotic characters, with the exception of Taye Diggs who is always seemingly smiling... Equilibrium definitely had a message to tell, and while most of it got lost in translation with a heavy focus on the interestingly cool martial arts choreography of the action, named Gun Kata. The literal breakdown of society here isn't necessarily in material things, or having them, but in the freedom of ones soul. This was made even stronger, eventually, as the climax of the film reveals the main protagonist himself is, and probably always has been, feeling. There is of course a resistance, and they are as ragtag as can possibly be expected in every encounter, living underground, dirty, no food, with the exception of a character in the film that is a singularity, Mary O'Brien. A character that takes our clerics already blurred lines and smears them away completely, helping aid his crossing over to the side that no longer has anything familiar, not even his children. The rest of the film is a mad dash of personal conflicts, choices, and eventual revelation, until anarchy and the inference of freedom and hope as the system burns to ashes... What wasn't completely clear, aside from a general assumption that could be made, was how large this world was. We never understood if the concepts of equilibrium and the Tetra Grammaton were isolated to their city, or this was a global situation. Eitherway, this film is still enjoyable for what it is, and has an interesting message, just ignore the marketing message that overhyped this film as "The Matrix Killer"...