A stupid sci-fi ripoff of "The Matrix" (as the long black coats amply give away). It deserves its lousy 38% rating on RottenTomatoes and, perhaps, deserves less.
Just how stupid is this movie? Well . . . :
* Consider that the Clerics in the film cannot seem to remember what their title is: Are they "Tetragrammaton Clerics" or "Grammaton Clerics." Bale's character calls himself both. (Is there some difference?)
* The whole premise of the film is that having emotions has become illegal and is punishable by death. Hence, everyone must take a drug, Proseum?/Prozium?, in order to stifle any emotions. Yet, EVERYBODY seems to be emoting. People smile, cry, get angry, get excited, show admiration, show surprise, and so forth. None of this apparently counts. Yet, get caught with a bottle of perfume and you are summarily whisked off to "processing"!
* In the opening scene, the Clerics arrive to purge an underground cell of emoters. After killing everybody, they discover, hidden under the floor, various paintings, books, and so forth. On top of everything is the Mona Lisa. No, I am not kidding. The. Mona. Lisa. It is real, too (doncha know), because one of the techies checks it out with some fancy device. Question: Does it even matter? Everything is burned, of course. (Too bad it was not a Jackson Pollock!)
* Oh, by the way: As Bale and Sean Bean, his Cleric partner are driving away, they talk about leaving -- or, in Bean's case: not leaving -- things for the "evidentiary team". Yet, they burn up anything and everything they find! So, what is the "evidentiary team" supposed to catalogue? Ashes? It makes aboslutely no sense whatsoever.
* Of course, being the Future, they have all of these high-tech, futuristic devices. When it came to checking the authenticity of the Mona Lisa above, some guy just pulled out a little device, scanned the painting, and within half a second could tell Cleric Bale that it was real. It is another scenario, however, when Bale wants to check up on whether Cleric Bean has actually checked a book into evidence as he was supposed to. In that case, Bale has to look at a mammoth-sized book in which people have had to scrawl their names in pen and ink.
And, then there is:
* Bale's acting, which is awful.
* Emily Watson, whose right lip keeps twitching upwards when she talks, so that you would think that you were watching Elvis in a wig.
* Taye Digges is clearly about five inches shorter than Bale. When he and Bale first meet, he is hunkered down in the driver's seat of their car. He looks like he could barely see over the steering wheel. And, the smiling! I wonder why he was never arrested for a "sense offense" (ugh)?
* Whenever the matter of some of the negative consequences of emotion and feeling is brought up (for example, war, murder, rape, hate, racism, etc.), the argument from the "pro-feeling" crowd goes something like: "Well, there are trade-offs." Really?! Even the leader of the Underground admits to Bale's character that there are some who have to sublimate their emotions in order to control and give guidance to those who experience them. In other words, he admits that the anti-emotion crowd has a point, namely, that emotions are dangerous and must be controlled. So, . . . how is he any different from "Father"?
And so on and so on . . .
There is some compelling camerawork. The fight scenes can be interestingly done, albeit sometimes pretentiously and with unnecessary showiness. The C. G. I. is substandard when compared to something like "The Matrix" which came before.
Just how stupid is this movie? Well . . . :
* Consider that the Clerics in the film cannot seem to remember what their title is: Are they "Tetragrammaton Clerics" or "Grammaton Clerics." Bale's character calls himself both. (Is there some difference?)
* The whole premise of the film is that having emotions has become illegal and is punishable by death. Hence, everyone must take a drug, Proseum?/Prozium?, in order to stifle any emotions. Yet, EVERYBODY seems to be emoting. People smile, cry, get angry, get excited, show admiration, show surprise, and so forth. None of this apparently counts. Yet, get caught with a bottle of perfume and you are summarily whisked off to "processing"!
* In the opening scene, the Clerics arrive to purge an underground cell of emoters. After killing everybody, they discover, hidden under the floor, various paintings, books, and so forth. On top of everything is the Mona Lisa. No, I am not kidding. The. Mona. Lisa. It is real, too (doncha know), because one of the techies checks it out with some fancy device. Question: Does it even matter? Everything is burned, of course. (Too bad it was not a Jackson Pollock!)
* Oh, by the way: As Bale and Sean Bean, his Cleric partner are driving away, they talk about leaving -- or, in Bean's case: not leaving -- things for the "evidentiary team". Yet, they burn up anything and everything they find! So, what is the "evidentiary team" supposed to catalogue? Ashes? It makes aboslutely no sense whatsoever.
* Of course, being the Future, they have all of these high-tech, futuristic devices. When it came to checking the authenticity of the Mona Lisa above, some guy just pulled out a little device, scanned the painting, and within half a second could tell Cleric Bale that it was real. It is another scenario, however, when Bale wants to check up on whether Cleric Bean has actually checked a book into evidence as he was supposed to. In that case, Bale has to look at a mammoth-sized book in which people have had to scrawl their names in pen and ink.
And, then there is:
* Bale's acting, which is awful.
* Emily Watson, whose right lip keeps twitching upwards when she talks, so that you would think that you were watching Elvis in a wig.
* Taye Digges is clearly about five inches shorter than Bale. When he and Bale first meet, he is hunkered down in the driver's seat of their car. He looks like he could barely see over the steering wheel. And, the smiling! I wonder why he was never arrested for a "sense offense" (ugh)?
* Whenever the matter of some of the negative consequences of emotion and feeling is brought up (for example, war, murder, rape, hate, racism, etc.), the argument from the "pro-feeling" crowd goes something like: "Well, there are trade-offs." Really?! Even the leader of the Underground admits to Bale's character that there are some who have to sublimate their emotions in order to control and give guidance to those who experience them. In other words, he admits that the anti-emotion crowd has a point, namely, that emotions are dangerous and must be controlled. So, . . . how is he any different from "Father"?
And so on and so on . . .
There is some compelling camerawork. The fight scenes can be interestingly done, albeit sometimes pretentiously and with unnecessary showiness. The C. G. I. is substandard when compared to something like "The Matrix" which came before.
