June 21: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 200s Action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

“Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120 percent. The difference of a 63 percent increased lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.”

If a movie has dialogue like this, I’m going to love it.

After World War III, the survivors founded the totalitarian nation of Libria, a place that outlaws all emotion, forces the population to take the emotion-suppressing drug called Prozium II and hunts down anyone who goes against this, labeling them Sense Offenders, who are soon hunted by the Grammaton Clerics. When they show up, you’re dead, and they’re also going to destroy any art, music or books you have before shooting you a thousand times.

Yet Libria, the its leader, Father (Sean Pertwee) and the Tetragrammaton Council are being challenged by the Underground.

John Preston (Christian Bale) is one of the clerics and he’s a single father after his wife was killed for being a Sense Offender. When his partner Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) saves a book of poems and takes them to the Nether — you know, the Cursed Earth or the Forbidden Zone — to read, he tells Preston that now that he has felt emotion, he can die. So Preston kills him.

The poem that he reads is “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats. Here’s the poem: “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

His new partner, Andrew Brandt (Taye Diggs), looks up to him. Yet since killing his partner, Preston has stopped taking the drugs and spares a Sense Offender, Mary O’Brien (Emily Watson). He soon meets the leader of the Underground, Jurgen (William Fichter), who convinces him that he must kill Father. At the same time, he’s also been charged with finding a conspiracy within the clerics by Vice-Counsel DuPont (Angus Macfadyen).

When O’Brien is terminated, he has an emotional breakdown and is arrested by his partner. He soon learns that DuPont is the new Father, having started a new group within the Tetragrammaton Council of those who don’t take the drugs either. As you can imagine, this leads our hero to killing everyone he can with a sword and guns. It’s why you came and saw this movie. I mean, the hero kills 118 people in this movie.

Equilibrium was produced by Jan de Bont’s production company, Blue Tulip Productions. The budget was covered by tax incentives thanks to de Bont’s Dutch citizenship and the international sales paid for this movie’s budget. So when critics didn’t like it and it only had a limited release, it didn’t matter.

When he was told about those reviews, director Kurt Wimmer said, “Why would I make a movie for someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with? Have you ever met a critic who you wanted to party with? I haven’t.”

This movie has been forgotten but I’d love if more people watched it. Sure, it takes a lot of inspiration from other literature, but it also has warrior monks who have guns that form the logo of their country when they fire them and it takes place in some side future that looks like a gothic world.