Unbalanced: "Equilibrium"

Or the answer to the question "How can a movie be dumb and interesting at the same time?"

I vaguely remember when this film came out, thinking, "Hmmm, Christian Bale not exactly chalking up the Capital A actor role." The story is fairly intriguing: In the future -- it's always the future, isn't it? -- society has outlawed feeling. To enforce this, they have "clerics" who are trained in a martial art called "gunkata." If you think that's karate with guns, well ... just exactly where did you get that doctorate degree, anyway?

Bale is a cleric, who, in the wake of colleague Sean Bean's odd behavior, begins to question this whole not feeling thing. Emily Watson helps him on this path as someone busted for appreciating the emotional things in life. Taye Diggs is Bale's new partner, who we are to believe is ruthless and uncaring and yet can't keep a slight sh!t-eating grin off his face throughout.

The first half-hour of this sets the stage and is largely boring. Things get mildly interesting as Bale gets all touchy-feely, and we also get to see more gunkata in action. But while we get a couple of nice twists en route to denouement, the bulk of the story is a bit hard to swallow, even if you accept that this is the standard "everyone put on your gray clothes and don't smile, at all, EVER" version of the future. The action makes up for this a little, but not enough. Still, if you want to see Batman get all up in people's sh!t while wearing an overcoat, get crazy.