The Cutting Room will take a look at the strange, fantastic, and sometimes suck-filled moments that end up on screen (but may have been better served on the cutting room floor). Today: Christian Bale Defies Death in Equilibrium.
You know what happens on Sunday afternoons? Action movies. Yep, and if you’re lucky you may end up re-watching one that’s hugely entertaining that leads to a satisfying 90 minutes spent marveling at Steven Seagal’s shirts with inexplicable shoulder pads or listening reverently to Arnold’s thespian delivery of “Geh Doo-Dee Choppppahhh!” However, if not, you’ll end up watching 2002’s Equilibrium starring Christian Bale, Sean Bean (Ned Stark!), and Taye Diggs while laughing your face off at the wholly improbable, sensationally craptastic, overwhelmingly overwrought gunplay, swordplay, and every other play you could imagine.
Please. Put in a few doves and bullets that bead like water on a moist glass and you’ve just summed up the entire late 90’s and early 2000’s. That, however, does not excuse these next three clips. Yet and still, legions of fans will hail their awesomeness.
Bang-Bang-Do-Si-Do
Bale as flashy gun pirate, John Preston, decides that there’s just not enough choreographed gun razzle dazzle happening in new millenium action flicks. So he’d like to audition for the musical, Bullets Over Broadway, where he’ll get a chance to kick, ball, change his way across a movie screen using nothing but his trusty sidearm and a pair of toe shoes. Look at the way he gives that guy a gun powered colonoscopy while executing a delicate Ront de jambe. It’s like his feet never touch the ground.
Bah! Why Reload At All?
Here he is again, dressed in all white, but with the same nifty plans for gun slammin execution! It’s Go Time, MotherEffers! Watch as he sails through the air firing as he goes, nonstop. Matrix be damned! Preston scoffs in your general direction. “See my gun show? Pow! You’re dead and you didn’t even know I could do that, Son!” (I imagine Christian Bale becomes cocky in only the way someone named The Situation can as he pulls off these feats of awesome.) Full body twist, jazz hands, firing a bajillion bullets into one guy? All in a day’s work.
No Matta, It’s Gun Kata
Martial Arts with swords. Pffttt! That’s child’s play. Let’s be samurais with guns, because that’s something that samurais would be proud to celebrate, you know if it wasn’t about honor and skill. How about we invent a Martial Arts style that you won’t find anywhere else outside of this movie and call it Gun Kata. This means that we’ll fight like we have swords, but because that’s teh lame, we’ll do it with high-powered guns! However, after we spend whole minutes of our lives trying to kill each other in the most complicated way possible, we’ll stop and chat for a spell using the typical “Bad Guy Must Reason With the Hero One Final Time” trope, which renders the last few minutes Gun Kata-ing our asses off, useless.
So, yes, this was the quintessential ode to “Gun Fu” as it were, or bullet ballet, gun kata, or gymnastic gunplay. Do you love it and are sorry this genre has mostly run its course? (Maniacs) Or is it hilarious and should only ever be enjoyed in the privacy of your own home amid friends and loved ones who won’t judge you too harshly?
Let us know of any other exceptional (or exceptionally awful) action sequences in the comments.
