âSo lacking in originality that if you stripped away its inspirations there would be precious little left,â declared the LA Times. âAn unsophisticated sci-fi drama that takes itself all too seriously,â agreed Variety. This cautionary parable of a defective society emerging from the nuclear wreckage of a third world war also left the New York Times unmoved: âA movie that could be stupider only if it were longer.â
To dismiss Equilibrium as unoriginal, self-serious or stupid is to overlook a deceptively rich text made with the skimpiest of budgets. It may borrow wholesale from some dystopian golden oldies â Libria is a boilerplate Big Brother surveillance state with heavy Fahrenheit 451 overtones â but it still brings something to the party that Orwell and Bradbury do not: the mesmerising martial art of âgun kataâ.