Forget about the "Matrix."
If you haven't seen "Equilibrium" already, you've missed out the coolest fighting style in the 21st century! I don't know how I forgot to include this movie in my movie-marathon e-mail last week. I saw it last November. It was devastatingly jaw-dropping. GUN-KATA is a sleek combo of martial arts and gun power. Masterfully performed with absolute precision and rapid speed, it is designed to instantly abolish the enemies at their weakest spot with no chance of survival. The premise of the movie is simple yet provocative. Set in the future of a totalitarian society, every human being is required by the government to take Prozium, an emotion-numbing drug, on a daily basis. Emotions are considered a crime. Any forms of individual expressions, such as arts, music and entertainment are banned. Everyone is breathing but living like a zombie. The "logic" is as follows: crimes are triggered by emotions. Jealousy, anger, outrage, impatience, heartache, and so on. If these feelings are numbed, then crimes will naturally disappear. Anyone who is discovered having feelings, or labeled as "Sense Offenders," will be hunted down by a special elite force. If they refuse to be taken in to the headquarters for punishment, walking into a burning chamber, they will be prosecuted on the spot. One day the head of the elite force, a "Cleric," highly trained in samurai and gunplay, accidentally misses his dose and begins to feel emotions and experience how amazing it is to feel. His senses are awakened. His transformation (starring Christian Bale) is very poignant and totally believable. You can guess how the rest of the story plays out. The final showdown between the two prominent clerics (classic good versus evil) left me speechless. While suspension of belief is a must, watching this stylishly innovative action sequence of GUN-KATA alone will be worth your price of admission. DVD: http://tinyurl.com/ylj35bv