Ack, I hate it when people bring up Taye Diggs. He nearly derailed Equilibrium for me. If I was the director, I would of all but thrown my own feces at him monkey style to try and get him to quit smiling. He was way too bloody smug to make a convincing tool of the establishment held in check by a humanity killing designer drugs.

The black guy isn't a tool for the establishment though, only for the guy running the show.  He gets to be whomever he likes, whenever, break the rules, kill the good guys, and in exchange all he has to do is not kill the main evil dude.  Who, in fact, turns out to be better at fighting than himself.  Cause, ya know, Equilibrium is all about the guns... and the fighting with the guns, and the beating one another up, and the stupid dog.  Stupid dogs... I'd totally of shot that puppy.  Bam bam bambam... dead doggie.

Equilibrium was an alright movie, I'll give it that.  But it isn't so badassery that many people should go and see it over tons of other badassery-like movies.  And there's no real, story, there, that hasn't been done a million times in the movie industry, especially recently.  I'd like to see a new spin on the same stuff, ya know?  Its nice when cliches are done again, because cliches are something that speak to us in some primal way, that's why they get done so much, buuuuut they gotta get better and better each time, else they just fall short.  Cliches not done well become kitch.  And although kitch isn't inherently bad, it isn't exactly art.  Equilibrium falls in the kitch category for me, and that's that.

Again I restate: HEAT

Cold

And that's fine, except for the fact that, to the rest of the world, he's supposed to present the image of a cleric. His role was about as subtle as the cartoon villain who makes a clone of the hero to trick everyone, except the clone is bright frickin' green. Stupid Law of Movie Character Economy. Couldn't even let us wonder which guys were actually corrupt or just plain misguided for a while. Diggs essentially ran on screen screaming "Look at me! I'm corrupt, smug and ambitious! And I smile! All of which is unnecessary to the plot!". That's my real problem with the movie, I guess, and why I agree with your overall assessment of it. There were more than enough cliches in that movie to keep the audience clued in on what's going on. They didn't need to be so breathtakingly hamfisted with everything else. If you're going to do a story everyone essentially already knows, you should be able to afford a bit of subtlety. Instead, we got fluffy puppies being held down by The Man.


And as far as Heat goes, I'm afraid it's too good of a movie for me to have much of an opinion on. People should see it.

V is for... VENDETTA!

Seriously, Hugo Weaving is amazing.  They just have to put a mask on him to let him act for real, otherwise people are just gonna spend the whole movie yelling "Do the Agent Smith voice!" at the screen.

See, it all comes back to The Matrix...

Yeah, we came full circle. Just like that time when Trinity got upset with Neo over the whole going 'back in' after Morpheus thing.  Totally classic.

Anyone who thinks Hugo Weaving can't act, needs to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert I think it is called. Haven't seen it in a while. I just recall watching the Matrix and going... nooo is that who I think it is?

Priscilla? Would that be something similiar to The Adventures of Princess Gwendolyn in the Land of the YikYak ?

Pretty sure that's the sequel.

The Quiet Andre speaks:

"I saw Avalon (Oshii, 2001), recently. And noticed the Shadowrun/Cyberpunk relationship. I dig the Herione, too."

Andre goes quiet, again. And listens.

Man, V for Vendetta was great. Haven't cried at a movie in years, other than that one.

A movie that I'm quite surprised has not been mentioned is Sneakers.

I always thought Streets of Fire had a nice SR feel.  At least the cyberpunk/rocker/violence stuff.  A little dated movie wise, being sometime in the 50s apparently.

Pity it tanked, there were going to be 2 sequels.