Personally I loved Equilibrium. Great action, some extra explation/editing was needed for one scene in the movie...doesn't lessen the movie for me. I went in wanting to see action and I got great action. Big thumbs up from me.

What makes a Hero really interesting is when you actually think he is interesting. This is done by creating a story. If you have a bad story behind the hero then it will turn into a bad movie in general. Lets put it this way. If the guy has to turn hero over night because:
A.) He just decided to shoot people
B.) His wife was killed by the villan and revange is in store

Which of the two works for you to actually make you feel for the character?




Sounds like you have a lot of bad films.


Sounds cool. be glad to see your views and respond with mine as we seem to differ on these issues. but in general when you think Action Film, I sure hope you don't think "Bad script but lots of booms". just like if you say "Comedy film" you don't think "Slap stick dirty jokes and pie humping"

People find "The Transporter" very entertaining movie even if it has bad plotting because why? Jason Statham is a bad ass action hero in that movie. He's a very intense action hero in that movie, and he has lots of potential. If "action" movies fans see a certain movie with a very cool looking action movie hero, they'll say something like "Wow, who is that? That guy looks awesome".

Why the hell do you think The Terminator and Rambo are very popular action movie heros, eh? Why do you think Bruce Lee is a very popular action movie hero? Why do you think guys like, The Rock, Vin Diesel, and Tom Cruise are very popular action movies stars these days? Why do you think Kurt Russell, Bruce Willis, and Mel Gibson good action movie stars?

The only reason is that people want to see a bad ass hero beating other guys up. That is why action movies fans don't care about plotting and story telling. They want to see the main action movie hero in action. Did I clear this up now, finally?

So if I were to answer your question, it would be the "B" option. There has to be a very good reason for a hero to to get into action. In every single action movie out there, there is one reason why they go out there and fight. They are mostly very simple reasons.


In your opinion.


Well most people watch "action" movies for the fight scenes.

It's the same way with other genres. Just like when people want to watch "comedies" for laughs, they want to watch "dramas" for the emotional scenes, they want to watch "horror" for blood/gore and scare, etc. It's bassically the same thing.

I thought this movie was better than the matrix. Much better action and Gun-kata is sweet. The story is actually quite good. There is definitely a deeper meaning to the movie if anyone didn't understand please watch again.

I liked the action,and the Christian Bale really was great.

Hated it.

I didn't find the plot particularly compelling and I don't think it was entirely sensical.

There was one good gun fight

The director and the writer were incredibly hamfisted, blatant cliches everywhere!

Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'd just heard a lot of good stuff about this movie, which is why i rented it, and i wanted to do my part to prevent such a tragedy from occuring again.

I was pretty let down by this movie, too. I heard a lot of good things about it and was expecting something a lot better. I thought the whole Gun-kata thing was pretty ridiculous.

The only action scene I liked was the brief swordfight at the end.

I watched RELOADED and Equilibrium in the same day and I enjoyed Equilibrium a lot more than the new Matrix film...

Sure the story is a little piecemeal, but I love dystopian themed films (1984, F451, BNW, Brazil, etc...) and the Gun-Kata scenes were just plain amazing! I loved the fact how quick and brutal they were, most of them literally got an outloud, "OH ****, THAT WAS SWEET" response from me... If you listen to the commentary track, it only took them 30 ****ing minutes to shoot the scene where Bale's character uses the butt of his guns to disable the troopers. That's quite amazing for how the scene turned out...

About the supposed plot holes(and there's are a few, but not nearly as many and you might think)



And BTW, the Matrix didn't invent that scene, and it wan't this revolutionary and innovative movie that everyone seems to think it is. What it IS a big amalgam of cool scene's from Hong Kong action flicks and Japanese anime.

I HATE how every action movie since 1999 has been a "Matrix ripoff" when the Matrix itself is the REAL ripoff. There's 3 scenes in the Matrix lifted almost down to the last detail from Ghost in the Shell.

Heck they even ripoff off some of the older Woo-ping Yuen films, and he helped them make the movie!

The only thing original in the entire movie was the bullet-time, but how many action movies have used bullet-time since then? Only one I can think of is Swordfish. Bullet-time has been used in spoofs alot more than it has in anything else.

I love both matrix and equilibrium. I have to say that bullet-time was not invented by John Gaeta. It was used in Gap commercials before that. He ripped that visual effect from that commercial and used it in a really cool way.