Equilibrium is a 2002 action flick starring Christian Bale & Taye Diggs, among others. While not getting the greatest reviews when it came out (37% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), it’s had a bit of resurgence in the intervening time, and at this point it’s rated 7.8/10 on IMDB. Because of the intriguing re-evaluation of this film’s merits, I thought it was worth a Netflix rental. As it turns out….this is a bad movie. Read on for more, spoilers included.

This story takes place in the not-too-far-off future, sometime after a World War III that causes much global suffering. In its aftermath, a new city-state was formed called Libria. Libria is a very orderly society, with little obvious crime and a population that never indulges in excess. The secret is that in Libria, feeling is outlawed. That’s right : feeling. The idea is that strong feelings incite violence, crime, all the horrible things in the world, and the horrible consequences of these negative emotions outweigh the good consequences of positive emotions. So feelings are out the door. But how to execute this? Well, first of all, every citizen of Libria has to take doses of a drug called “Prozium” (hmmm, could it be any more obviously like Prozac?) that suppresses their emotions. At certain points throughout the day, there is a chime heard throughout the city, and then everyone takes a dose, called an interval. This drug is dispensed at government pharmacies called equilibrium centers. These doses are mandatory, but it’s difficult to enforce. Thus, Libria has an extensive police presence that enforces this behavior. If “sense offenders” (seriously) are found, they are arrested and (theoretically) tried, with the punishment being incineration. Like, putting them in a chamber and burning them.

Libria is ruled by the Tetragrammaton Council, which sounds like a fascist library tribunal. At the top of the Council is Father (who strangely reminded me of Steve Jobs), who shows up on video screens throughout Libria periodically, giving speeches explaining how important it is for everyone to follow the rules and do their part for society. Father is very reclusive and only speaks to his council. Beneath the council and head of the police are the Tetragrammaton Clerics, specially trained police and investigators who lead the search for sense offenders and contraband (known as EC-10 material for its emotional content). This is the situation we find ourselves in as the movie starts.

It’s a grungy, dirty, abandoned building. A man is listening to a record on a record player (something that is outlawed in Libria). Suddenly, a whole host of police cars pull up. The occupants of the building shout out words of alarm and warning, and everyone grabs rifles and shotguns; they know that this is a battle to the death. Despite their great skills in pointing their guns out of the windows and blindly firing at the police below, the police are unscathed and soon storm the building. But it’s not just the normal police who are here : there are two Tetragrammaton clerics here as well, Partridge (played by Sean Bean) and John Preston (Christian Bale). A few spectacular fight scenes later, the building is cleared, and the search for contraband commences. Preston has a sixth sense for finding this stuff, and he soon orders the floorboards in a room to be pulled up, revealing works of art, which are a controlled substance. In fact, its the real Mona Lisa! It’s quite a successful raid, something to be proud of.

I’ll take a break here to point out a few things. I imagine the director/producer picked out the Mona Lisa because its so recognizable, perhaps the most recognizable painting. But in general, I would not say that the Mona Lisa is the most emotion-provoking painting I could think of. Not a huge catch, there, in my view.

Secondly, I must talk about Gunkata. This is the martial art that the Tetragrammaton Clerics are trained in. The traditional martial arts use arms and legs and sometimes weapons, but everything is always short range. As I mentioned during my G.I. Joe rant, the easiest way to combat ninjas are to run backwards while shooting (assuming you ever see them). In Equilibrium, the clerics are trained on how to use firearms in their martial arts. Which seems strange…how can you block a bullet? A martial art involving firearms would just have to be completely based on shooting the opponent while not getting shot at all yourself. Which is exactly what Gunkata is about. One of the premises of Gunkata is that “the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element.” Therefore, with careful study, an expert in Gunkata can predict where everyone is, avoid their shots, and then return fire. In addition, a skilled Gunkata-ist can use their firearm as an effective melee weapon.

The following is a YouTube video posted by a user who has helpfully spliced together all of the action scenes of the movie. Although I think this movie is stupid, the action scenes are worth watching, as this movie, if nothing else, is very stylish and visually striking. You probably don’t have 9 minutes of time, so I’ll just say the good parts are between 0:45-1:42, 2:53-3:35, 5:40-6:24, 6:32-7:42, and 8:00-9:05.

I have a few problems with this. For one, let’s say that the Tetragrammaton Cleric can determine a firearm’s location and trajectory with 99.5% accuracy. The number of people Bale takes on in this movie is roughly 50 …. the chances of him avoiding 50 shots with those odds is a mere 78%. “Playing the odds” is something you do in the stock market and in the casino, when you just need to have more wins than losses at the end of the day. This is more like russian roulette, where one wrong bet ends the game. Also, in a lot of the action scenes, it’s not like he’s dodging the bullets. He’s just moving his arms. His ability to, at a glance (or perhaps by sound), notice the positions of all the shooters and start shooting at them all rapid-fire is plausible, but everything else isn’t.

But I’m getting off track from my deconstruction. After finding and burning the Mona Lisa, Preston and Partridge are being driven home. Preston asks Partridge why he didn’t burn a book of poetry, which Partridge had put in his pocket himself. Partridge says that he was going to turn it into the incinerator personally, to make sure it got taken care of. The seeds of doubt have been planted. Of course, it turns out that Partridge has not been taking his Prozium doses, and thus has been feeling emotions. He took the book of Yeats poetry for his own enjoyment. In the end, Preston is forced to kill him for his crimes.

After this “painful” experience, Preston forgets to take a dose of Prozium himself, and starts to question his own beliefs in the system. As the Prozium bleeds from his system, he finds himself drawn into the mystery of Partridge’s life, and spends time trying to figure out Partridge’s connection to the rebellion and the underground movement.

Eventually, he’s given a new partner, Brandt, played by Taye Diggs. Brandt suspects that Preston is off his meds, and is driven to prove that he’s been feeling emotions. The thing is, Brandt appears to be righteous and ambitious (he feels that by exposing Preston, he will make his career). Last time I checked…those were emotions. It seems like if he’s on his Prozium, he should just want to do his job, check in at 9 , check out at 5. Not make a play for a promotion. And later in the movie, when Preston frames him for crimes, Brandt is furious at the deception, vowing revenge. Again, emotion.

Brandt and Preston’s first assignment is to lead the charge against rebels in the “Nethers”, people holding out in a warehouse, no doubt hiding contraband. Preston, with his newly found conscience, is empathetic towards the rebels, and doesn’t actually shoot anybody, although he doesn’t stop the slaughter, all the same. After the building has been cleared, he and Brandt are called behind the building to investigate a discovery, in what turns out to be probably the most (unintentionally) funny scene in the whole film. It’s a fenced off area filmed with dogs. Like, puppies. Brandt expresses wonder at the concept, theorizing that they are there for food. You see, in the one generation (I’m assuming) that Libria has been without emotion, people have forgotten about the concept of pets. Anyways, this is against regulations, so one of the soldiers walks in and starts blowing away puppies with a shotgun. You hear yelps and whimpers of pain, and see the look of disgust and horror appear on Preston’s face. Suddenly, one of the puppies gets past the soldier and runs out of the caged area. “Someone catch him!” Preston grabs him before he can get away, and lifts him up to get a good look at him. Of course, its just about the cutest puppy in the world, whimpering at him. Ignoring the offers to kill the dog for him, Preston stutters that he’s keeping the dog “to run some tests and see what diseases he has” and blusters off.

Of course, Preston can do nothing of the sort, and returns to the Nethers later on to set the dog free. But even then, he can’t stand the pitiful whimpering of the dog, and puts him back in his trunk, deciding to keep him. Just then, he is stopped by a patrol of cars investigating his admittedly suspicious behavior. The patrol leader eventually recognizes Preston as a cleric, and is about to leave, when he hears the puppy bark from within Preston’s trunk. Discovered, Preston is forced to kill everyone in the patrol in spectacular fashion (2:53 – 3:35 in the YouTube video).

The shocking murder of the patrol results in an order from the Librian government to crack down, and soon Brandt and Preston are sent to another sector of the Nethers to kill some more rebels. Just like last time, Preston’s conscience and empathy prevents him from killing the rebels, but this time he takes it a step further and kills Librian soldiers in order to allow the escape of the rebels. There is a ridiculous scene (5:40 – 6:24 of the YouTube video) where he stands in the middle of six soldiers and then beats them all to death with the grips of his pistols. He does this without getting shot, and without any of the soldiers taking two steps back and then shooting. All his efforts are for naught, though, and all the rebels are rounded up and executed, although Preston refuses to do the deed himself, making Brandt even more sure about his treason.

Realizing that he’s gone too far to turn back, now, Preston makes contact with the Resistance (under the guise of working as a double-agent), and is convinced that Father must be killed. Unfortunately, a private audience with the man is impossible, since he is a paranoid and never appears to anyone. The only way Preston could be granted an audience is if he does something spectacular, like infiltrate the resistance and arrest them. So, the resistance turns themselves in so that Preston can get his audience. Unfortunately, the Tetragrammaton Council has known of Preston’s betrayal all along (it wasn’t hard to figure it out, really. He was fairly unstable and prone to emotional thinking), and let him think that Brandt had been successfully framed. In actuality, this was all a trap for Preston, and now they had the Resistance and the treasonous Cleric. To prove that Preston is off of his meds, they submit him to a polygraph test, since it should be able to detect anxiety and the physiological changes that will plague a guy lying when he’s just been taken off of Prozium. At this point, another secret is revealed : Father has been dead for some time, and is just a computer-generated image at this point. The real power, the voice behind Father, has been a council-member named DuPont whom Preston has spent the whole movie talking to. Preston realizes that he has been in the presence of the dictator the whole time.

However, they forgot the Tetragrammaton’s secret weapon : sleeves! Preston hides all sorts of guns and munitions up there, and he bust them out to kill the guards in the room and make his way to DuPont. What follows are a few stirring action sequences that lead him to the office of DuPont. There is a stunningly anticlimactic penultimate battle with Brandt (but not anticlimactic in a bad way), and then a hand-to-hand gunfight with DuPont, a fellow Gunkata practioner. If you’re wondering how you can have a hand-to-hand gunfight, just watch the last minute or so of the YouTube video. After DuPont’s death, Preston sends a signal to the resistance, which sets off timed explosives in the Prozium factories and starts the uprising, shooting and killing the soldiers for the first time. Revolution has come.

My objections to the movie are partly material, in that this world of Libria that has developed isn’t as devoid of emotion as they would like us to believe. There is still righteousness and anger. I guess I was thinking it should be more like the Vulcans and less like a cold-hearted killer. In some of the special features, they had interviews with the castmembers, and one thing that Taye Diggs said drew him to the script was the concept that it was “a morality play”. Sure, yeah, it was a morality play in the sense that there were bad people and, uh, mostly less bad people. But it wasn’t a morality play in the sense that there was moral ambiguity to be explored. You’re not sitting there wondering who the good guys and the bad guys were. It was pretty cut and dry. On my last international plane ride I watched Training Day (Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke), and that movie was surprisingly ambiguous. You could leave that movie thinking “Yeah, that cop is crooked, but perhaps he was justified in his actions. When you’re trying to control evil people, maybe there’s no choice but to be evil yourself.” But in Equilibrium, there was no such sense. The Prozium had blinded the Librians to the inhumanity of what they were doing. In the name of stopping all war….they were killing hundreds and hundreds of people that were doing nothing more than listening to music, reading books, and looking at art. Its not like the Clerics were busting up child prostitution rings lead by people who weren’t taking Prozium.

Secondly, I was disappointed at where the twist in this movie led to. If Libria was actual, I think that the scandal would be a little bit different. Perhaps Father’s dogma could last through his life, if he was suitably charismatic enough, but I find it hard to believe that after his death, that the main philosophy of his teachings would still hold. Instead, what I would expect would happen is that the highest members of government would all forgo Prozium in order to partake in emotion, because as the upper class, they would feel entitled to feel the awesome things that Prozium provides. And as long as the lower classes are taking Prozium, then they have a bunch of sheeple to lead around. The perfect situation, in other words. Perhaps this is just classist of me.

In the end, I wonder how much of the new found respect for this movie lies in politics. I mean, there are militia people out in Montana who hoard guns, sure that the government is going to come and take all their firearms, burn their churches, and implant microchips in them. Equilibrium is a wet dream for them — its the manifestation of all their dictatorial, big-government fears, and justifies all their paranoia. Perhaps its just a reflection of my political biases that I find the premise ridiculous, and my alternative twist to be more plausible.

If this movie had come out before the Matrix, I would give it more points for being original. However, while stylish and possessing some great action sequences, the ridiculousness of this movie just makes me label it as : angry-bad.

But this time, I have a number of interesting choices, both old and new. The Hangover, about 4 Harry Potter Movies, The Taking of Pelham whatever, Training Day, a couple of James Bond movies, Transporter 3, Heat, Shawshank, The Da Vinci Code, Night at the Museum, Little Miss Sunshine, Babylon A.D., and some others. A number of these movies fall in that nether region of “I would never pay to watch that, but if you strapped me into a seat for 11 hours, I might consider them.” One movie in that category especially caught my eye : G.I. Joe.

From all that I’ve read, G.I. Joe is a horrible movie. I didn’t think that it would exceed my expectations. However, I did feel that it might be angry bad fodder. And boy, is it ever! It is so bad, that I find myself reaching for my laptop while the movie is still running so I can record the ridiculous before I forget about it.

G.I. Joe is just the latest entry in the obsession with taking my childhood toys, applying CG, and pumping out crappy movies. It should come as no surprise that movies such as Monopoly and Bazooka Joe (seriously) are in the works. As this movie was coming out, all the signs pointed to a disappointment. All the trailers were very careful never to show more than 0.5 seconds of any scene, with absolutely no dialog. No screening events. A Wayans Brother. Etc. But enough build-up, on to the suck. And naturally, there will be a lot of spoilers as I discuss the plot.

Much of the premise of G.I. Joe is that there are two secret, opposing forces that have technological capabilities far superior to that known by common armies. One of these is an international collaboration between various military groups, while the other is a mysterious, privately backed special ops force.

The formidable weapons used in this movie are “nano-mites”, nano-sized machines that will consume metal relentlessly until a kill signal is sent to them. I really wish these script writers had never picked an issue of Popular Mechanics or Scientific American or a Neal Stephenson book or whatever the hell they picked up that gave them the idea for nanoweapons. It’s turned into such a trite, malleable plot device. Basically, it’s the modern equivalent of magic. Need a process by which you can control people remotely, and a weapon that will disintegrate metal? Nano-machines. That’s the ticket. Anyways, one of the villains in this movie is a defense contractor, who has used billions in NATO funds to build these nano-mites, which he can put into a warhead. When fired at, say, a tank, the warhead impacts the tank, the nano-mites are released, and metal is devoured. They will keep going until a remote kill switch is activated.

Practically speaking, this is a strange concept. I’m willing to give in to the idea that you could create such a tiny, autonomous device that contains both motors and circuitry, as well as a receiver that could detect the kill signal and stop going. But I’m having trouble figuring out exactly how it works. Since these nanobots can’t have too much of a power source, it can’t be that they are literally ripping apart the metal at the molecular level; that would require the mites to be supplying the energy to rip atoms apart from one another. And it would be hard to make that specific to metal. The nearest concept I can figure is that they consume metal, and possess some sort of catalyst that lowers the activation energy required to rip up metal. This is an interesting device because it seems like it should be fairly non-lethal; you debilitate and consume the car that a person is driving, but not the person. But I don’t get why NATO would want it, because it’s such an asymmetrical piece of weaponry. Yeah, it’s great against tanks, but NATO isn’t fighting Russian aggression anymore; they’re fighting terrorists and doing other peace-keeping missions where they will have the overwhelming advantage in technology, but can’t apply it as needed to get the job done.

All this is just philosophizing, though. The evil villain produces these weapons, sells them to NATO, and then sets things up so that his super soldiers (i.e. Cobra) attack the military convoy and takes the weapons back. This plan is foiled by the arrival of G.I. Joe, who stops Cobra from getting the warheads. Only two (Army? NATO?) soldiers survive the attack, mostly because of luck, but possibly because they’re bad ass, and they are taken to the G.I. Joe base (hidden underground in the Sahara) to meet up with the leader of G.I. Joe, played by Dennis Quaid. These two soldiers are Duke Hauser and Ripcord (played by Marlon Wayans), and eventually they become permanent G.I. Joe members. In order to build up a little tension, we also find out that the crazy woman leading the charge for Cobra (the Baroness) happens to be Duke’s ex-fiance, estranged since her brother died while under Duke’s squad’s protection in a previous conflict.

Cobra wants those warheads, and attacks the base using machines that drill under the earth, and busting through the facility’s back door, so to speak. Three Cobra troops walk through the base, killing everyone in their path to get those warheads back. Lots of explosions. The crack troops of G.I. Joe, taken from the best of the best around the world, who have trained for years, are no match. The two new soldiers, who have been in the group for maybe a week, and done a small amount of training, do make it through, although they aren’t able to stop Cobra.

The attackers, while severely outnumbered, are helped by the fact that they have been enhanced by nano-mites (unaffected by fear or pain) and the fact that the Joes defending the base have a poor concept of military tactics. They like to stand out in the open, in a line, and shoot at people, for instance, instead of going for cover.

This movie also features a pair of ninjas. This in itself is a great idea, because ninjas are awesome. However, they are quite limited in the modern era. In movies, you tend to have to resort to outlandish scenarios to make it all work. In G.I. Joe, the Joes have Snake Eyes, perhaps the most popular character in the series, and Cobra has Storm Shadow. Ninjas are hard to kill, but I think the main secret to defeating them is to be far away from them, and then shoot them. With bullets. If they start running at you, start moving backwards while shooting. In this movie, people are constantly using blades when they should be shooting, and shooting when they should be using blades. This isn’t to say that Storm Shadow does not have projectile weapons. He does have shurikens, and when he throws them at people, they get knocked back and thrown through the air. Must be depleted uranium shurikens or something.

Despite the efforts of the Joes, Cobra (Storm Shadow and The Baroness specifically) gets the nano-mite missiles and escapes the Sub-Saharan (haha, get it?) facility. Not long after, they track the missiles to Paris. The Baroness is actually a baroness, married to a baron. Who also works at a particle accelerator. They will use this connection to commandeer the particle accelerator, and use the accelerator to “weaponize” the nano-mites. Basically, the writers took two things that they don’t understand (particle accelerators and nano-mites) and combined them to advance the plot point. The Joes run into Cobra just as they were leaving the accelerator facility, and a chase through Paris ensues. Some of the Joes are following in a vehicle, but Duke and Ripcord participate in the chase wearing mechanical exoskeletons that gave them increased speed and agility.

The modern world has destroyed the classic car chase, because it should be just about impossible to “get away”, with the invention of helicopters and coordinated police action. Midway through the chase, it becomes clear what the target is : the Eiffel Tower. A giant structure made of metal is the perfect target for these nano-mites. Instead of getting in some sort of helicopter and beating Cobra to the chase, they continue to chase the bad guys through the streets of Paris. Cobra, for their part, are “racing” down the narrow streets of Paris in a souped up Hummer, with enough horsepower that it can repeatedly crash into cars without slowing down. This Hummer can withstand the bullets that are being fired at it, but not the sword that Snake Eyes puts through it. Duke and Ripcord are chasing the Hummer in their little super suits, but are neglecting the main advantage of their exoskeletons — the mobility. They should be taking shortcuts between buildings, using cut off angles, etc., not blindly following the car along the road.

At one point during the chase scene, the Joes are separated from Cobra by…a train. Like, a speeding train. In the middle of Paris. According to IMDB, this train is based on the Tramway des Maréchaux, which is a slow moving tram, instead of the bullet-like train that barrels through in the movie, seemingly with no warning. This stops the Joes in the car, although Duke and Ripcord are able to navigate over/through the train. However, all their ill-conceived effort is for naught, because Cobra is able to destroy much of the Eiffel tower before Duke is able to hit the killswitch.

Now, after all of the carnage is over, the police finally show up and arrest the Joes. But not before they find one of the dead bad guys and inspect his brain, trying to analyze the remnants of gray matter to view his last memories. One of the images they play back is a noisy image of the evil mastermind and his shadow. Based on the length of his shadow and a rough estimate of the time, they narrow it down to only one location : underneath the polar ice cap. This whole thread is ludicrous. It’s so ludicrous that it something that I thought of a long time ago in one of my stupid fiction stories in high school. Except my version was actually reasonable, because the character in my story had a bionic eye that maintained a constant 10 second buffer, allowing someone to extract the last 10 seconds of his life, post-mortem. In this case, they are inspecting a guy who does not have bionic implants (although they did have a nano-mite infestation), and they are trying to dig back a lot farther; at best it should be in short term memory. Secondly, even beyond that, knowing the length of the shadow and a definite time would get you a latitude. Knowing how long ago that time was would get you the time zone. Knowing just the length of the shadow and how long ago it was would just get you a line that crosses different latitudes. It just seems like the writers could have found an easier way to identify that the next stop should be the North Pole.

In all the confusion, Duke was kidnapped by the bad guys, so the Joes are resolved to rescue him and defeat Cobra. Soon, they’re off by plane-that-can-turn-into-a-boat towards the North Pole. I don’t know how far into the future this movie takes place, but there’s a decent chance that by that time, there’ll be no ice during the summer. But whatever. They fly past snow-capped mountains on their way. Mountains! There’s nothing but ice and water up there, people.

What follows next is a big underwater battle while our main characters infiltrate the underwater base to rescue Duke and defeat evil. There is quite an extensive evil laboratory/base underwater here, tunneled into the ice pack. Again, considering the recent climate trends, it seems like it would have been better for Cobra to have firmly anchored all of his stuff off of the bottom of the ocean. The big underwater battle is an awful lot like overwater battle, just bluer. That’s always a bit disappointing. I always hope for some interesting physics and sound effects, but nope, everything is just as maneuverable underwater as it would be above water, and sounds mostly the same.

In all the excitement, there are a lot of amazing plot developments. First of all, we find out that the Baroness has at least partially been under nano-mite control. We find out that the real mastermind behind this whole thing has been — the Baroness’ assumed-to-be-dead brother! He was horribly disfigured in an explosion and left for dead, and the pain had twisted his brilliance until he decided to become the Cobra Commander. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow have the obvious showdown that has been building this whole movie, ever since we find out that Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes trained under the same master, until Storm Shadow killed the master due to jealousy over favor given to Snake Eyes. The battle between them is sword-filled and ridiculous, and ends with Storm Shadow falling to his “presumed” death.

There is one scene I have to mention though, because it had me shaking my fist like a madman at the tiny airplane lcd screen. At one point the G.I. Joe rescue party came across a pressure-sensitive security floor. Scarlett, the brainy redhead, recognizes the security measures, and declares that the floor is very sensitive, to the extent that “anything larger than a quarter” will activate them. Snake Eyes responds to this by walking across the floor on his fingertips, which are smaller than quarters. Of course, if this was anything but a stupid movie, that would have exacerbated the problem, since it’s a pressure sensitive floor, and Snake Eyes was concentrating his Lose Weight Exercise onto his fingertips.

In the end, the top villains manage to get away (of course), but not before setting off the self-destruct button and launching two nano-mite missiles towards Moscow and D.C. First, the self-destruction : explosions rip through the ice and stuff starts sinking, threatening all the Joes in their underwater craft. Now, I realize that this is actually plausible, because there is a lot of metal embedded within the ice, enough to make it denser than the water. But I wouldn’t put it past the writers to think that they could blow ice up and have it sink down on the protagonists. Now, the missiles. They are already too far away for the kill switch, so they must be shot down. Ripcord finds one of Cobra’s special, experimental planes, and jumps in to fly it, since he’s a pilot and can thus fly anything (he actually says this).

Ripcord has a deadline to work against. One missile will hit Moscow in 4 minutes, and D.C. in the 18 minutes. They’re closer to Moscow, so that’s his first target. He manages to catch up to the nano-mite rocket, but he can’t find any firing controls on the plane. Scarlett immediately guesses the issue : it is voice activated. And since the evil CEO was Scottish, it only responds to Gaelic commands. Which, luckily, she speaks fluently. Ripcord takes out the missile with one minute to spare. Next, he had to save the missile heading for D.C. It’s about 4900 miles from Moscow to D.C. To get there in 17 minutes, he would need to travel an average of ~ 17,000 mph. Which is mach 22. In other words, impossible.

Amazingly, he does it, and gets within range to fire — but he misses his first shot. The missile is now so close to the city that even if it is destroyed, the nano-mites will hit the ground and wreak havoc. Ripcord decides to make a risky move. He accelerates towards the rocket and fires his weapon just before hitting it, flying through the cloud of nano-mites to gather them up and then flying straight up in the air. Within seconds he’s in the upper atmosphere, gaining altitude even as nano-mites are busy eating up his airplane (an airplane this advanced is probably made of fiber-reinforced composite, though, so I bet a lot of it isn’t even metal). At the last moment, he ejects himself, leaving the plane (and the nano-mites) to exit into space. The G.I. Joe crew
waits breathlessly by the radio, waiting to hear word from him. It takes 30 seconds or so, but finally he speaks up, free of the airplane and slowly drifting towards D.C. Everyone cheers! Ripcord is saved! Sure, hundreds of other soldiers have died today, but the wise-cracking new guy is safe! Hooray! Ripcord can be confident that Scarlett will be there for him when he returns to Earth. You see, although she was a cold woman, unflinchingly dedicated to logic and uninterested in emotional attachments throughout the movie, Ripcord breaks through her facade with a few well-timed caring comments over the course of a few days. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works in real life, too.

It wouldn’t be a bad movie without setting up a sequel. One of the last scenes involves the President of the United States going into his secure bunker after the missile warning went out. Once locked in, one of is secret service agents goes rogue (he’s being controlled by nano-mites) and eliminates the others. A secret panel opens up and out pops…another President! Cobra has made up an impostor and are clearly intending to pull a coup! Who is this man, and who’s the real villain here? And really, even if a person looked like the president, could they really pull off the replacement without arousing suspicions?

This movie, unfortunately, made a ton of money, so there will likely be a stupid sequel. Full of horrible, horrible dialogue (with quotes from the cartoon shoehorned in wherever they can put them), nonsensical action sequences, ridiculous use of science, and improbable human interactions. Here’s to hoping that the only chance I get to watch it is while strapped into a chair at 30,000 feet.

This movie features the enforced duality problem. I probably just made up that term, and there’s probably a fancier philosophy term for it, but basically it means that there are two competing portrayals of history, and we are supposed to believe that if one is proven to be true, it disproves the other, and vice versa, when in fact there is a wonderful spectrum of possibilities in between. Ben Gates, the Nic Cage character, reprises his role as the spunky cryptohistorian. He thinks that his great-great-grandfather was a national hero, who realized that holdovers from the Confederate army (John Wilkes Booth and company, the Knights of the Golden Circle) were using him to decode a cipher that would allow them to obtain a vast treasure (Cibola, the City of Gold). Thomas Gates disposed of the clue, at the cost of his life. His son was in the room, and passed along the story as family lore. But now someone has come forward with a page of Booth’s diary claiming that Gates was a co-conspirator in Lincoln’s assassination. Gates must find the treasure to prove his ancestor was right….although really, it would prove nothing except that the treasure exists. It in no way exonerates Thomas Gates. But whatever, we apparently need a reason to find a vast amount of treasure this time.

The villains in this movie are led by Mitch Wilkinson, a “Black Market Dealer”. He’s the guy who had the page from Booth’s diary, and as we find out, is descended from a senior member of the Confederate army. So we know he’s evil. He tries to intercept Gates in London after he picks up a hidden, ancient artifact squirreled away in Buckingham Palace, and a chase scene ensues. With guns. In London.

One reason that martial arts films work better in Hong Kong and China than in the States is that handguns are outlawed there. You can have one guy beat up a whole room full of guys, because everyone just has their hands, feet, and maybe some sticks or small blades. If someone tried to go all Jackie Chan in the States, someone will just pull out a 9 mm and put him down from 30 paces. While extended hand-to-hand combat is more realistic in those other countries, the opposite is true of extended gunfights. In the States, if you see someone walking down the street with a holstered gun, there’s a decent chance they might be allowed to carry one. In London, if you see a guy walking around with a gun, if he’s not police he’s probably up to no good. So, it’s completely ridiculous when evil Mitch pulls out a gun and starts shooting indiscriminately. There’s a 10 minute chase scene that goes into crowded pedestrian areas, that involves a truckful of kegs spilling all over the road (after the kegs are shot at), numerous fender benders as they speed through the streets of London….and never once do we hear the sounds of the police. In fact, the legal repercussions of this scene are completely glossed over in this movie. All parties involved appeared to evade the authorities with no consequences. Considering the 500,000+ CCTV cameras in London (and the fact that helicopters exist), the fact that no one was apprehended after this chase is amazing, considering how reckless the villain is about his….villainy.

So what does Ben Gates do when he realizes that Mitch will eventually kill innocent people if this goes on? He gives up the artifact. But before he gives it up, he needs to take a picture of it, for future analysis so he can stay a step ahead of the game. But he has no camera, and no cell phone (camera), and neither does anyone else. What to do, traveling in London? As soon as he started lamenting his lack of camera, I started thinking “Oh, no he wouldn’t…” But he did. Ben Gates runs a red light, prominently, while holding the artifact up, to get the red light camera to take a picture of him. And then gets his assistant Riley to hack into Scotland Yard to get the picture for him. I believe it took about 12 key strokes. The picture had good enough resolution to make out all the glyphs on the artifact. So, now that he has that out of the way, he lets the bad guys drive up so he can open up his window, pass over the artifact, and end the almost-carnage. But just before the hand-off occurs, Yoinks! — Ben flips it into the Thames. Of course, it’s a wooden artifact, and thus floats. The bad guys stop (in the middle of the bridge), and one guy jumps in to retrieve it, giving Gates & co. enough time to book it. That just seemed like poor thinking. Of all the things you could do to that wooden artifact, throwing it in water seems like one of the least damaging. I probably would have gone with fire.

Of course, the artifact they found tells only half the story. The other half is in the Oval Office, in the President’s desk. That part’s easy, though. Through some shenanigans, they are able to sneak into the White House and open up the secret compartment on the President’s Resolute Desk…but the glyph is missing! The only thing that was there was a mysterious stamp….a stamp that represents the Book of Secrets!

The eponymous Book of Secrets is yet another ludicrous plot device in this this movie. The idea is that each President has a book which contains all the crazy secrets of the country, and that this Book gets secretly passed down from President to President, who has a hiding place of his choosing. Only Presidents have seen the inside of this book, which has stuff on Area 51, Bigfoot, etc. Ben Gates needs to talk to the President and get a hold of this Book. But the President would never admit to its existence in the presence of anyone else, and it would be impossible, under normal circumstances, to get an audience with the President with literally no one else around. So, there is only one option.

He has to kidnap the president.

Step 1 of kidnapping the president: choose the battlefield. The President has a birthday party coming up. So, they start a rumor that the building they were going to hold the party in used to hold KKK rallies, or something to that effect. True or not, the party planning committee had to change its plans. Preemptively, Gates & co. go out and book all the backup locations, except for Mount Vernon. Apparently, the type of places that are fancy enough to hold the President’s B-day party are the type of places that will take reservations over the phone, without deposits or documentation, and will hold those reservations even when the White House comes calling 30 minutes later. Mount Vernon it is.

Step 2 : Crash the party. Gates scubas onto the banks of the estate, ditching the wetsuit for a tuxedo and a bottle of champagne. He fools the Secret Service into thinking he’s just a drunken partygoer who had been getting frisky in the bushes. Because, I mean, he’s wearing a tuxedo. Why would he be wearing a tuxdeo if he wasn’t an invited guest?

Step 3 : Engage the interest of the President. Gates strolls right up the president and unfurls an old blueprint of Mount Vernon. Knowing that the President is a history buff, he entices him with the knowledge that there appears to be a previously undiscovered passageway on the premises.

Step 4 : Seal the deal. Gates and the President find the entrance to the secret passage, turn a few ancient (but operable) dials, and open up a passageway. Once through, Gates closes the way behind him, cutting off the Secret Service. With the Secret Service trying to knock down walls to get into the passage, Ben finally has some alone time with the President. They have a stirring discussion, by the end of which Gates convinces the President to give up the location of the Book — the Library of Congress! Hidden, of course. For his cooperation, the President is shown the exit to the passageway (so he can hitch a ride from a trucker), and Ben Gates can head to the LoC. Since the Book is secret, of course, the President can’t say that’s why Ben Gates kidnapped him. You’d think he could come up with something, though. But he doesn’t. For the rest of the movie the Feds are trying to arrest Gates for kidnapping the President. Just like in London, though, it’s really hard for the police to actually nab him. He manages to get to the Library of Congress without them finding him, and manages to get out of there even when they have the place surrounded with hundreds of agents. Apparently, their jurisdiction doesn’t not extend beyond the Library’s parking lot, because once they were through the parking barriers, they couldn’t be found.

While he was in the Library, he does find the Book of Secrets. The artifact had been destroyed, but they took a picture of it. The accompanying records showed that Calvin Coolidge had found the glyph, and deciphered it, discovering that this treasure was in the Black Hills, in South Dakota. So what’s a President to do, in the 1920′s, when faced with the prospect of a tremendous amount of Native American gold? Hide its existence, of course. Destroy the incriminating artifact, and deface the land so that the physical landmarks described in the clues no longer exist. What ‘defacement’ am I talking about, you might ask? Mount Rushmore. Yes, the national monument where the visages of America’s greatest Presidents are engraved is actually a cover for hiding the location of a long lost Native American treasure. What an expensive cover. It’s never clear why Coolidge didn’t take the gold or hide it somewhere else. I mean, it probably wouldn’t even have made the Top 10 list of bad things that white people have done to Native Americans. The Book of Secrets also reveals that the Queen of England had given clues to the Confederacy, in the hopes they would find the gold, use it to remain independent, and weaken the United States in the future.

But whatever. Ben Gates and Mitch find themselves at Mount Rushmore, working together under coercion (Mitch is holding Ben’s Mom hostage). They have to spray water on the right rock to get a symbol of an eagle to appear, and luckily manage to find the right rock within five minutes and everyone’s first water bottle. From then on, they find the secret entrance to an underground chamber. It’s not quite clear if the American government moved the treasure here, or if they just made a new opening to the chamber. There are a number of giant gears, pendulums, and traps that help keep this place secure, oddly enough out of place for both ancient Native Americans and early 20th century Americans.

It is as we are fumbling towards the climax that we finally learn what Mitch Wilkinson’s motivation for this entire drama is — he wants the Wilkinson name to be known for something awesome like finding a treasure, not something lame like being in the Confederacy. Mitch doesn’t even want the treasure for himself; he knows that it will turn into — ahem — a National Treasure, not melted down into his own treasury. So, Mitch’s motivation for threatening dozens of bystander lives in London, for assaulting both of Ben Gates’ parents, for lying and stealing and hurting all throughout this movie, is that he wants to redeem the Wilkinson name. Right.

By turning some ancient wheels in this ancient underground cavern (underground, and next to a lake, but not completely underwater), they open up some ancient tubes and drain the water away from the entrance to the main vault of the cavern, where they behold a veritable pyramid made of gold, 100 feet tall. To please all the anthropologists in the audience, it also holds the rosetta stone for translating ancient Native American languages. But the danger is not over yet! The machinery that diverted the water away from this vault begins to break down, and the vault begins to flood again. They need to get out of here! Water is rushing, gushing everywhere. Where is it all going?! Apparently not being able to follow the motion of rapidly flowing water, Ben Gate’s father (played by Jon Voigt) drops a dollar bill into the water so they can follow it. They all dive in, and appeared headed to the exit — until they come up against a wall that blocks their path. A giant crank in the room can raise the sluice-gate….but someone needs to stay behind to keep it open while everyone leaves. Mitch helps Ben open the door so everyone can escape, but only with the agreement that Ben will stay behind to let Mitch through, trapping Ben behind forever. But before Mitch can consummate his evil deed, the room starts to collapse, trapping Mitch under a rock. With his last ounce of strength, he holds the door open so everyone can leave, imploring Ben to honor his memory by giving him credit for finding the treasure.

So everyone but the bad guy lives, and they escape the caverns without dying of hypothermia. Once outside, they call the authorities so the treasure can be looted properly by scientists. They are granted a special visit by the President, who takes this moment to tell the Secret Service that Ben Gates didn’t kidnap him and that it was all some sort of misunderstanding. I think this means that if Gates didn’t find the treasure, he would have been arrested for kidnapping the President.

So that’s pretty much it. Bad guy dies, Ben Gates finds yet another treasure, and Gates’ ancestor told the truth when he said that there was an ancient treasure map that led to the City of Gold, which somehow exonerates him from being a co-conspirator with John Wilkes Booth. I watched it all so you don’t have to.

Virtuosity is horrible. And it is not entertaining

How bad is it, you might ask? I mean, it has Denzel Washington in it. Denzel!

Do not be fooled by Denzel’s presence. This movie is bad. It’s so bad, that well before the final credits began to roll, I was formulating this post in my mind.

Warning: there are spoilers ahead, but clearly I don’t care about spoiling this for you.

The movie takes place in (presumably) future L.A., where they are testing a virtual reality simulator, apparently for police training. They are using convicts to test out the system (Denzel, an ex-cop, is one of them), and the antagonist in the system, the thing that they are training “against”, is Sid (Russell Crowe), a virtual reality construct designed by its programmer to be an amalgam of history’s most vicious serial killers and psychopaths. Of course, one of those psychopaths just happens to be the killer that killed Denzel’s family (whom Denzel killed, and that’s why he’s in prison), but we only find that out later. Upon learning that the simulator would be shut down, for killing too many guinea pigs, the programmer — who is clearly the 2nd most psychotic person in this movie, yet was never monitored closely — figures out a way to save his precious virtual reality program by getting it implanted within an android. There’s some stupid nanotechnology technobabble, but whatever, Sid is now an android that can heal itself by absorbing glass (because he’s made of silicon, and glass is silicon dioxide). He promptly gets on the loose, surprise surprise, and Denzel is given a conditional pardon if he tracks the guy down, because Denzel is the “only guy who could catch him”. Keep in mind this is not a secretive psychopath who stalks people in the woods and kills him. This is a super-megalomaniac psychopath that lives off the thrill of being the center of attention, for better or for worse. Meaning he kills people publicly, he goes to places where there are lots of televisions and people, and starts executing people. Yeah, Denzel is the only person who can track this guy down.

I don’t mind ridiculousness. All horribleness aside, I enjoyed Armageddon even though it was absolutely terrible, since it at least it embraced it’s terribleness, and with Jerry Bruckheimer as producer, it had lots of explosions and action. When terrorists hacked into the Internets (all of the Internets!) in Live Free or Die Hard, I rolled with it. When Jeff Goldblum disabled alien ships in Independence Day by uploading a virus from his Mac, I could deal with that. I can ignore gaping technological loopholes as plot devices, if the rest of the movie can make up for it. But come on, man.

They know exactly what this guy looks like. They had him in the virtual reality simulator. They could totally broadcast his image as the suspect, and have citizens call it in. Hey, there’s Russell Crowe walking down the street in a zoot suit! Send in the cops! They don’t need Denzel for this. They just need a bunch of guys with guns who will actually shoot the guy executing people instead of running behind him and then yelling at him.

At one point in the movie, Denzel is ‘framed’ for shooting someone, and he’s put in the back of a police truck and driven away. Sid stops the truck, kills the guards, and sets Denzel free because he wants to be chased. Instead of just sitting put, of course Denzel actually leaves. And the police come to the conclusion that Denzel, who was handcuffed and disarmed in the back of a paddywagon, uncuffed himself and shot the guards and escaped. They decide to concentrate their attention on finding him rather than the serial killer who has just gleefully killed multiple people.

A little bit later, Sid hijacks a tv studio. How? Well, he walked into the glass-walled control room of the studio, kills the production crew without alerting anyone, and presses some buttons on the control panel to take over the broadcast. He then starts shooting people on air, deriving enjoyment from watching his instant ratings meter rise. Once Denzel sees this, he rushes to the scene. The police are putting up barricades all around the building. They see Denzel! They decide to just start shooting at him. Apparently, the police commissioner, who found out the truth about Denzel being framed, never sent out the memo that Denzel is still a good guy. A lot of glass was broken. But he makes it to the bullet proof elevator and takes it to the 38th floor, where the studio was. Yeah, the police were busy making sure the building was barricaded, but no one bothered to actually go up to the studio to check out the story of the psychopath in the tv studio shooting people.

Meanwhile, Denzel walks into the studio and shoots Sid. A chase ensues that leads to the top of the building. Where a police helicopter is hovering. Hmm…will the police helicopter shoot at the guy that’s been on the television murdering people….or Denzel? Yeah, Denzel. The guy can’t catch a break. Finally, the copter is called off (instead of being ordered to shoot at Sid) to allow Sid and Denzel to have a final stupid showdown fight. Where Denzel decides to punch and kick the android instead of shooting it. Where Sid jumps from platform to platform, taunts Denzel to follow him, and stomps on Denzel’s hands when he stupidly tries to follow him. When they end up falling off the building but slamming into some windows, and then Denzel tosses Sid through about 6 layers of plate glass, which cuts him up something awful.

But didn’t I say earlier that Sid regenerates by absorbing glass? Yeah, he does. So when Denzel climbs down to taunt the dying android, he obviously doesn’t think back to all the times beforehand where Sid has eaten his way through glass. Or no one at the police department thought to tell him something like “Hey, by the way, this guy is totally immortal if glass is around”. Denzel doesn’t blink an eye at the fact that throughout this movie, he keeps on shooting Sid, and hitting him, and it really doesn’t seem to do anything, despite the fact that he never once shot in him the head, which would have probably ended this stupid movie early.

But there’s one last part of the movie that I need to mention, that put me over the top. The stupid side story is that Denzel is partnered up with a female criminal psychologist, who does absolutely nothing worthwhile in this movie. But she does have a small child that is perfect for a hostage situation. So of course Sid kidnaps the kid, stuffs her in a secret location, along with a bomb. Which is exactly what that serial killer did to Denzel’s family. So the criminal psychologist couldn’t predict that Sid, who was behaving exactly like Denzel’s old nemesis, would do something similar to get to him. Anyways, they do some trickery and figure out where the kid is hiding, and race to there. By helicopter.

Smartly, Denzel doesn’t allow his partner to open the door to the hostage room. He knows its booby-trapped.
“Denzel, the bomb squad will be here in five minutes.”
“No, there’s no time, I need to go in myself.”
There’s no time? You just took an hour detour to trick Sid into telling you where the kid was? Now you’re gonna race back and say that you can’t wait five more minutes?

So then Denzel goes through the ceiling of the room to get the girl. But man…there’s a giant industrial fan spinning, blocking his way. What to do? Oh yeah, he’ll stick his bionic arm in the path of the fan and stop it. Did I forget to mention that he has a bionic arm? Yeah, well this is only the second time in the movie that it’s noted that he has a bionic left arm, and the other time is when he’s scanned at a prison and the computer cheerfully tells the audience that he has a bionic arm. So let’s be clear here : the writers gave Denzel Washington’s character a bionic arm so that he could stop a fan with it. Like, the writing team was just stuck at some point:
Writer 1 : Man, it would wrap this movie so nicely if he would just go through the ceiling and save this little girl, but there’s a big old industrial fan in the way.
Writer 2 : I know! Let’s give him a bionic metal arm!
Writer 1 : That’s ridiculous, we haven’t mentioned it at all.
Writer 2 : Don’t worry, I’ll just slide a mention of it into a scene near the beginning. It’ll make perfect sense.
Denzel does not use this arm to punch people with great force, or bust down doors, or block bullets. He only used it to stop a fan blade (which cut him open), and then used some newly exposed wiring in it to disarm a bomb by connecting two random connectors (literally, he did eeny-meeny-minie-mo over three choices).

Part of the problem is that this movie was released in 1995, and so it’s concept of the “future” is ridiculous. But I can forgive poor predictions of the future from 13 year old films. Here’s one major problem — in this film, which either takes place in the “future” or in an alternate timeline, there’s artificial intelligence, true virtual reality, and self-organizing, self-healing, nanotechnology — all of which is apparently funded by the LAPD. But the rest of the world is exactly the same as it would be in say, the late 1990′s. That’s some imagination there, Brett Leonard. You really showcased your vision.

This is not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It would take some real soul-searching to decide upon the winner of that distinction. But this movie does not qualify for one category — a movie that is bad, and that made me vocally angry during it’s viewing. This movie is — Yusuke and I came up with this some time ago, I think — angry-bad. A movie that keeps me up until 1 am, writing a supremely long post that no one on the Internets will read in its entirety.

A new category is born.