EQUILIBRIUM

This was written two weekends ago. shout-outs to atalanta and mrzero for the recommendation.

***

You should rent the movie "Equilibrium." You should see it alone. It's a very silly movie, but let me tell you -- nerds like you and I get a kick out of stuff like this. See, if you see it with someone else, they'll keep reminding you how preposterous just about everything in the film is. If, however, you see it alone, you'll get a huge kick out of the blasphemous mixture of gunplay, Chinese martial arts, Japanese swordfighting, Chow Yun Fat, Judaica, Orwell, Fascism, and God knows what else I missed or can't remember right now.

It's the future. There's been a WWIII. Humanity nearly eradicated itself.* The emerging governing body, the Tetragrammaton (*snort*), forces the population to take Prozium (*snort*), a drug that dulls emotion to a flatline. This eliminates all animosity, completely ending warfare, with the unfortunate side effect of killing off feelings in general. The elite enforcers of the law under Father (*snort*), the Clerics (*snort*), master the formidable Gun Kata (*SNORT*), a form that blends gunplay, statistics, Kendo, and Kung Fu (*snort*... I'm getting hoarse, here). Armed with practically supernatural power, the cleric hunts down and kills sense offenders (*snort*) -- persons who skip their Prozium intervals and indulge in such horrific crimes as listening to music or possessing perfume. Their ultimate goal is to eradicate all unlawful material (rated EC-10, presumably for Emotional Content or something, *snort*) and to locate and destroy the Underground, a secret enclave that takes no Prozium and likes paintings.

The shit hits the fan when the Tetragrammaton's best cleric accidentally misses his Prozium interval. Man, you need to see what happens to this guy when he runs into a puppy.

The budget wasn't so great. Check out the clerics' rides: white-on-white-on-white Cadillac STS sedans with some plastic bits glued on. All the real effort went into the Matrix-shaming fight scenes. I know this makes me a total retard, and there were certainly some really dumb parts**, but damn those were some cool moves.


* Yeah, yeah, yeah...
** I don't care how sharp your katana is -- heads don't slice like deli meat.