Equilibrium

Equilibrium is a 2002 American science fiction dystopian action film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, and starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, and Taye Diggs. Miramax Films released Equilibrium on December 6, 2002, and it grossed $5.3 million on a budget of $20 million. The film follows John Preston (Christian Bale), an enforcement officer in a future in which feelings and artistic expression are outlawed and citizens take daily injections of powerful psychoactive drugs to suppress their emotions. After accidentally missing a dose, Preston begins to experience emotions, which makes him question his morality and moderate his actions while attempting to remain undetected by the suspicious society in which he lives. Ultimately, he aids a resistance movement using advanced martial arts, which he was taught by the regime he is helping to overthrow. Plot Libria, a totalitarian city-state established by survivors of World War III, blames human emotion as the cause for the war. Any activity or object that stimulates emotion is strictly forbidden. Those in violation are labelled "Sense Offenders" and sentenced to death. The population is forced to take a daily injection of "Prozium II" to suppress emotion. Libria is governed by the Tetragrammaton Council, led by "Father", who communicates propaganda through giant video screens throughout the city. At the pinnacle of law enforcement are the Grammaton Clerics, trained in the martial art of gun kata. Clerics frequently raid homes to search for and destroy illegal materials – art, literature and music – executing violators on the spot. A resistance movement, known as the "Underground", emerges to topple Father and the Tetragrammaton Council. In 2072, John Preston is a high-ranking Cleric whose wife, Viviana, was executed as a Sense Offender, leaving him as a single father of two. Following a raid, Preston notices that his partner, Errol Partridge, saves a book of poems by W. B. Yeats instead of turning it in for incineration. He follows Partridge to the Nether – a term for regions outside the city – and finds him reading the book. After seeing Preston, Partridge says that he gladly pays the heavy price of feeling emotion; Preston executes him as Partridge slowly reaches for his gun.