10 Movies Everyone Remembers For ONE Awesome Scene
8. Lights Out - Equilibrium
Equilibrium was one of the many sci-fi action films released in the shadow of The Matrix, and one which was ultimately a shameless grab-bag of countless other, better genre entries.
Wearing its Orwellian thematics on its sleeve while refusing to acknowledge how fundamentally goofy its "gun kata" action aesthetic was, the Christian Bale-starring genre film nevertheless got its single truly great scene out of the way early.
Gun-totting instrument of the state John Preston (Bale) struts his stuff in an opening raid sequence, where he leaps through a locked door as his squadmates shoot out the interior lights.
After a moment of pitch black, Preston unleashes the full force of his marksmanship on the assembled "criminals," mowing them down in sheer darkness - with occasional muzzle flashes - while receiving not a scratch himself.
It's a supremely badass scene, but the rest of the movie is really just a beige, over-familiar dystopian thriller that's so aggressively 2000s it hurts.