Ultraviolet/Equilibrium

It's been a while. To be honest, the entertainment climate has downright sucked. No movies have come out that made me run out to the theater. They don't call them the winter doldrums for nothing. However, next week brings us an interesting looking movie; Ultraviolet. The movie stars Milla Jovovitch as a type of genetically enhanced mutant/super soldier in a future where her kind are being exterminated. To tell the truth, it doesn't look that original. It could be fun, or it could be derivative as hell. I'm going to see it for one reason; it is written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, the man who made Equilibrium. Equilibrium didn't have the most original concept either: in a dystopian future, where people are ruled by an unforgiving government, a member of the government decides to fight against the system. We've seen it before, in Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984. What made this movie fresh and exciting were two things. The first is the presentation. The method of control the system uses in this story is the elimination of emotions via a drug. Christian Bale plays a government enforcer known as a Grammaton Cleric. These guys are the best of the best, using a technique I'll talk about later. Through a series of incidents, Bale's character misses a dose of this drug, and begins to feel emotions for the first time. Bale does a damn good job of portraying someone feeling emotions the first time. It makes you appreciate the feelings you take for granted. The second thing that makes this movie awesome is the technique the Clerics use, called Gunkata. Gunkata involves the study of every recorded gunfight in history. They learn the statistics of gun fighting, and then dodge bullets by simply not being where the bullets are likely to go. Yeah, it’s unbelievable. The odds of someone learning enough about gun fighting that they know where the bullets are going to be before they are fired are crazy, and the way the clerics fire their guns would make them deaf within a month. But it’s cool looking, and entertaining, which is the reason we watch movies in the first place. The guys at Penny Arcade sure like it. Ultraviolet might stink. But Kurt Wimmer’s earned the benefit of the doubt.

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