2341 ( )

2021 movie #185. 2002. Preston (Bale) is a Cleric who hunts down sense crimes in this dystopian future where the gov't drugs everyone to deaden feelings. When Preston goes off his meds he begins a journey to the underground resulting in revolution. OK film but very violent. ( )

Part of my enjoying this movie so much does of course have to do with when I saw it -- I hadn't seen a lot of dystopian action films at that point in my life, and so this likely seemed more different than it actually was. But that's only part of it; the movie's really quite good. It has some minor believability issues and plot holes, but they all tend to be regarding the unimportant stuff -- the logic of the "gun kata", how the world arranges marriages and children if emotions are prohibited, and so forth -- while the emotional and thematic core of the movie holds steady. The mood of the film is excellent -- grim without being insufferably depressing, the pacing deliberate without feeling slow. For all their questionable logic, the fight sequences look amazing. The movie has enough callbacks in dialogue and plot that it feels like it rewards you for paying attention, and enough twists that, while perhaps none of them individually very surprising, even on my fifth watch (admittedly 15 years after the first one) I didn't feel sure I remembered exactly what would happen at any given time. It's not a Great film, but it's a solid and good one, and I'm pretty sure going to keep being happy to keep rewatching every five to ten years. ( )