Film / Equilibrium

"So we have created a new arm of the law: the Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man: his ability to feel."

— Father

Equilibrium is a 2002 Science Fiction action film directed by Kurt Wimmer and inspired by many previous works of dystopian fiction (particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four, We, The Giver, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and The Matrix). Also the film that defined the trope of Gun Kata.

After a Third World War devastates the Earth, the totalitarian state left in its wake (Libria) comes to consider human emotion as the root cause of all conflict. Libria subsequently bans all emotionally stimulating material (e.g. art, books and music); any "sense offenders" caught by the police end up sentenced to death by incineration. The government also requires citizens to take daily injections of an emotion-suppressing drug in order to prevent "sense offense".

The governing body of Libria — the Tetragrammaton Council — uses the police to maintain conformity; the high-ranking Grammaton Clerics, trained in the martial art of Gun Kata, frequently carry out raids where they destroy both "sense offenders" and any offending materials found with them. A pre-Batman Christian Bale plays the role of John Preston, a highly-regarded Cleric who accidentally fails to take a dose of his emotion-suppressing drugs and ends up feeling emotions — which attracts the attention of the other Clerics and the Council's leader, the all-powerful "Father".

This film has a character sheet.

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Equilibrium contains examples of the following tropes:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The katana used in the final confrontation delivers a Clean Cut.
• Aesoptinum: The drug Prozium subdues emotions to prevent such things as violence and war. This is helped along by the banning of anything with an Emotional Content rating of ten, which can include anything even remotely artistic, and anyone caught with such contraband is burned alive (or shot repeatedly if they try to make things difficult). Naturally, there's an underground resistance that the main character eventually champions after he stops taking his meds.
• After the End: The setting takes place after World War III and a nuclear exchange that devastated most of the nations of Earth. One of the surviving states is Libria, ruled by the Tetragrammaton Council which blames the freedom of human emotion as the cause of this war.
• All Crimes Are Equal: Sense offenders were executed by incineration, no matter how accidentally they feel emotion.
• Alone in a Crowd: John Preston after he goes off his emotion-suppressing meds. Probably many of the sense offenders as well, but the movie doesn't focus on them.
• Ambiguously Christian: The government is called the Tetragrammaton, which is the Hebrew name for God; the official government symbol is a cross. Moreover, the head of state is called "Father", similar to the pope and other religious leaders, and the law enforcement agents are called "clerics", traditionally a religious title. However, there is no direct reference to any religious themes, even in Father's constant propaganda.
• Ambiguous Situation: Brandt's trademark satisfied smile. Depending on how you interpret it, it might imply that he doesn't take Prozium, like DuPont, or that he takes it so zealously that his facial expressions have gone meaningless, with the smile being a shade of his former mannerisms.
• Animesque: Equilibrium is very shiny and futuristic, and borrows heavily from Asian themes such as martial arts, dystopian settings and the Confucian anti-emotion culture common in traditional Asiatic societies. Librian Clerics even make use of Katanas.
• Artistic License – Art: In an early scene, the Grammaton Clerics capture and destroy a stash of contraband art, including The Mona Lisa. Their scanners even assure them it's the original Mona Lisa — but it's still much larger than its Real Life counterpart.
• Awesome by Analysis: Gun Kata's shtick is that those trained in it can switch targets as fast as possible while avoiding the opponent's shots thanks to studying many recorded gun fights and calculating the most likely positions to maximize lethality while minimizing vulnerability.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • Preston himself, and the Clerics in general.
  • The Sweepers themselves wear somewhat-less-badass longcoats. Although one of them does motorbike through a Resistance stronghold while firing an MP5K one-handed.
• Batman Cold Open: The action-packed opening raid showcases Preston's abilities as a skilled Grammaton Cleric.
• Batman Gambit: Preston stops taking Prozium and infiltrates the resistance. Just as DuPont planned.
• Behind the Black: In the climax, John Preston walks into a small circular room with numerous pillars. After a brief conversation with the bad guy on the opposite side of the room, they cut to a shot standing in front of the door, while bad guys step out from behind the pillars. The problem is that they were on the same side of the pillars as Preston. Some even walk all the way around the pillar just to make for a better reveal, rather than just moving straight for their target. Of course, it's possible he actually saw them, he just didn't care.
• Bloodless Carnage: Interestingly, this trope is played straight (much like in Ultraviolet (2006) after it) with Sweepers and other Tetragrammaton mooks, with plumes of smoke coming out of them instead of blood — as if they literally were just faceless puppets of the evil regime, not human beings. However, it is averted with Resistance fighters who do bleed. Special mention goes to a man who tries to grapple Preston and gets shot by Brandt — Preston's gun and gloves are subsequently covered with his blood.
• Bloodstained Glass Windows: Played with, since only one shot is fired in a church.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: In the final fight, Brandt guards DuPont even though, after Preston cuts off Brandt's face, it becomes clear that DuPont is a master at Gun Kata. Before that, Preston had to mow down a group of imposing-looking Praetorian Guard in DuPont's office, who fell just as quickly.
• Book Burning: The dystopian society does this to pretty much any piece of art or literature considered inductive of emotion. They also like to kill dogs for much the same reason.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: If you count "removing human emotion, positive and negative" as brainwashing, then yes, this qualifies for the trope. However, it is only a justification that Humans Are Bastards.
• Broken Faceplate: When a mook's visor is shattered, they invariably collapse and die; it's due to being shot in the face, or a pistol lethally slamming into the Sweeper's skull after passing through the faceplate.
• Bullet Proof Human Shield: At one point, Brandt machine-guns a sense offender who is grappling with Preston without killing him too.
• Captured on Purpose: The resistance group around Jurgen let themselves be captured in order to further their plan of getting Preston close to Father.
• Catapult Nightmare: Happens to Preston after he stops taking his Prozium.
• Chekhov's Gun: Where Preston literally hands his gun to Brandt for later exploitation.
• Chemical Messiah: The drug Prozium makes people emotionless. The top brass sells it as a solution to man's tendency to war and strife. It isn't addictive, though going off of it can be difficult for people because it's almost like going on a drug, with a flood of emotions that are hard to control or hide.
• Chewing the Scenery: Brandt does this sometimes. Of particular note is the scene where he publicly shames Preston for being a sense offender.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: The Tetragrammaton Clerics are tasked with rooting out and apprehending or killing Sense Offenders. Preston, stated as being one of the best Clerics, fails to realize that his entire family, his partner Partridge, and his boss are all Sense Offenders. It's clear that his reputation is based on A) his combat skills and B) his contraband-sniffing skills, rather than his ability to actually find the people he's supposed to be hunting. Though it could also be that he is better at spotting sense offending in strangers.
• Computer Equals Monitor: Preston shoots out a bank of monitors, causing all of Father's propaganda throughout the city to fizzle out.
• Contract on the Hitman: Preston is a highly-trained police officer/executioner for the brutal totalitarian government of Libria. Once he recovers his own emotions and realizes what a monstrous society has been created in the name of peace and tranquility, he becomes a rebel himself and has the authorities gunning for him.
• Convenient Photograph: Preston finds a photograph amongst Mary's belongings that shows her with Errol, revealing them as lovers.
• Creator Cameo: Director Kurt Wimmer plays one of the Gun Kata practitioners in the beginning of the movie. He also acted as Christian Bale's hand double for some close-up shots^note Wimmer noted that it was simply faster and cheaper for him to achieve the exact shots he needed, rather than trying to explain what he was looking for to Bale and shooting multiple takes until they got it right.
• Creepy Child: Preston must keep his sense offenses secret from his own son, who is as creepy as you'd think a boy without emotions would be. It turns out to be an act, as both of Preston's children are also sense offenders.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Is being roasted alive really the most efficient way of disposing of undesirables? Firing squads make sense, chambers of literal fire do not.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Preston's final fight against Brandt. According to the DVD commentary, the whole film was shot on a tight schedule, and the final confrontation scenes in particular were made in a rush. They actually had planned for a legitimate fight scene between Preston and Brandt, but they simply couldn't get Taye Diggs available in time to do the scene, so they did a pragmatic move and turned the whole thing into a Single-Stroke Battle, with a body double standing in for Diggs.
• Curiosity Causes Conversion: Though the curiosity only happened because Preston ran out of curiosity-suppressing drugs.
• Darkened Building Shootout: Preston enters a pitch-black warehouse and begins a gun battle; the scene is illuminated only by muzzle flashes as we see glimpses of him performing his Gun Fu and mooks flying through the air.
• Deadly Euphemism: This exchange:
  John Preston: Then I have no choice but to remand you to the Palace of Justice for processing.
  Mary: "Processing". You mean execution, don't you?
  John Preston: Processing.
• Diagonal Cut: There's a perfect diagonal cut/slide apart in live action as part of its climactic fight sequence, and the victim is even courteous enough to turn his head to the side so the audience can see his face sliding off. It looks exactly as awesome/stupid as it sounds.
• Dramatic Deadpan: When Preston prepares for the climactic battle: "No." and "Not without incident."
• Dramatic Gun Cock:
  • Partridge induces Preston to kill him by cocking the gun in his lap.
  • Just before massacring a whole squadron of Helmet Mooks, Preston pumps two shotguns simultaneously by jerking them back so fast that the shotguns pump themselves.
• Dramatic Shattering: When Preston hears Beethoven's Surprisingly Moving Song on vinyl, the Snow Globe of Innocence slips from his hand and crashes on the ground at the exact moment the Dramatic Timpani sets in. Followed by a Dramatic Sit-Down and Tears of Awe.
• Dull Surprise: Possibly the only film in existence that not only justifies its existence but makes it a plot-driven requirement! Specifically, since everyone is on emotion-suppressing drugs, or at least supposed to be, they either lack the capacity to react to the unexpected otherwise, or have to fake such a (lack of) reaction to avoid being outed as sense offenders.
• Dystopia: Libria is basically 1984 with Gun Fu. Emotion is Thoughtcrime, all citizens are required to take psychiatric medication to suppress it, and if people resist then the state employs elite supersoldiers to annihilate all the thought-criminals. The Tetragrammaton Clerics are a more ass-kicking version of the firemen from Fahrenheit 451, with a wider remit. (The firemen only destroyed literature, the clerics destroy all art.)
• Dystopian Edict: "No emotions at all!"
• El Cid Ploy: The Reveal that Father has died years ago, with Vice-Counsel DuPont impersonating him via hologram and taking his place as leader of Libria to avoid unrest.
• Emotion Suppression: People are required to use a drug named Prozium to suppress their emotions. Refusal to administer it is punishable by death.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: Prozium is designed to block out emotions so that there will be no more violent conflict.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: The main character accidentally misses the dose of medication that makes all citizens of Libria emotionless. Next morning he wakes up from a nightmare, and all colors are unusually vibrant. Then he tears off the paper covering the window in his room, and sees the rainbow as a symbol of hope and renewal in this grey Crapsack World.
• The Evils of Free Will: Father's dogma. Emotions are seen as an enabler and the cause of all of humankind's problems — hate, fear, jealousy, violence — thus Prozium to suppress them all.
• Evil Wears Black: All clerics and agents of the Tetragrammaton wear exclusively black, up to DuPont with his all black suit, shirt, and tie combo.
• Exact Words: When Brandt arrests Preston, he tells him that he was right to make his career with him. This mirrors an earlier scene when the two first met only back then the line sounded like Brandt wanted to succeed as Preston's partner.
• Executive Suite Fight: The showoff between Preston and his adversaries goes down in DuPont's office.
• Face Death with Dignity: Partridge is aware that he's been sense-offending, carrying a Yeats book of poetry. He's cool, calm, composed. Constantly, even when faced with death. When Preston becomes suspicious and finds him in the church, he doesn't look up, doesn't bat an eyelid, totally aware that Preston is armed. He even goes so far as to read from one of Yeats' famous poems, 'The Cloths Of Heaven'. He looks up, questioning everything the system stands for, hoping to get Preston to at least understand what's going on before he dies. We find out later from Mary that he was her lover and he secretly fought for the Resistance. The way he says the line below describes how resilient he is because he doesn't do anything to prevent his own oncoming death despite knowing what was coming for him. He's going to die fighting for a cause and he wants it to stay that way. If it means dying for your beliefs, he's in no denial.
  Partridge: You always knew.
• Faceless Goons: The Sweepers, who wear either riot gear or storm-coats, but almost always wear closed helmets.
• First Time Feeling: Hits Preston hard, not least because, at the time, he's found and is listening to an old vinyl album of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, one of the most tremendously moving pieces of music ever produced by the human species. Even the script describes this introduction to human emotion as 'unfair' (but it does a lot to explain his subsequent actions).
• Fist of Rage: When Preston is asked by DuPont if he has faith in Father's doctrine, Preston affirms while clenching his right fist in rage.
• Flatline: The dramatic flatline sound when Preston goes into Tranquil Fury mode during the polygraph test.
• Flat "What": The reaction of the Nethers captain to seeing two of his men killed with their own shotguns. Justified because, like everyone else, he would have been on Prozium and not felt fear at the result.
• Flock of Wolves: Subverted. It's implied Preston is one of the few Clerics who still is taking Prozium when the movie starts, although, apart from Partridge, he is also the only who openly rebels against the order.
• Foreshadowing: Several instances:
  • When Preston and Brandt are sparring with wooden swords midway through, Preston gets a quick strike to Brandt's face, setting up his fate at the end of the film.
  • In the beginning of the film, Brandt comments that he needs to stop by an Equilibrium center to have his dose adjusted, meaning he's either under-medicated or over-medicated.
  • John's daughter playing with her cereal near the beginning of the film foreshadows that she is no longer on Prozium, as does his son getting annoyed with her hint that he isn't on it either.
  • DuPont is teaching the Gun Kata class early on because he himself is a master practitioner. Also he refers to the traitor as being "one of us, the Cleric".
  • Jurgen is seen early on at a public broadcast about the dangers of sense offending, letting you know that he actually takes Prozium to maintain his cover.
  • Aside from his perpetual, barely-contained bad mood, DuPont is seen angrily slapping a table during a conversation with Preston, suggesting that he's not on Prozium. Brandt's emotional displays also suggest this.
• Frame-Up: Preston incriminates Brandt by using the latter's gun in a shootout at the Nethers.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Preston's Beretta shot flares look like the Tetragrammaton cross logo. The producer himself has stated that it was mostly a wasted effect, as few viewers noticed it.
• Future Imperfect: When Sweepers discover a dog pen after storming a Resistance hideout, Brandt mentions that this isn't the first time they have come across something like that, but he has no idea why the Resistance members would keep those animals. His wild guess is that they probably eat them.
• Gambit Pileup: There are a few reveals in quick succession right before the climax. First there is Preston who gets Brandt arrested and supposedly processed by switching their guns. Then Brandt appears next to him at the start of the interrogation, revealing it was all just a part of the plan. Afterwards Father appears on the screen in front of Preston, claiming he's been used as an Unwitting Pawn from the beginning. And when Preston expresses his doubt about how Father knew about him if they never met, the image on screen dissolves into... the face of DuPont, who's been secretly ruling Libria himself while posing as Father this entire time. And finally, Preston reveals he came prepared to the interrogation with guns up his sleeve.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The incinerator personnel at the Hall of Justice. In scary black Soviet PBF gas masks.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Although all of the main characters, both evil and good, wear black for the majority of the film, the climactic final battle sees the protagonist in a stunningly-white ceremonial uniform, while every one of the antagonists he fights — from the motorcycle-helmeted goons to the Big Bad himself — is dressed entirely in black.
• Good Costume Switch: Preston dons an all-white suit before the Final Battle, presumably his parade uniform since he's going to see Father. He even has his sword with him in a white scabbard.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: The movie features an interesting, somewhat inverted take on this trope. All mooks of the evil Tetragrammaton regime use "advanced" NATO firearms like a Beretta 92FS, Heckler & Koch MP5, FN P90, M16 carbine, or Heckler & Koch G36 — therefore, "good" guns in Western culture. However, Resistance members are mostly (but not exclusively) seen using old-school Soviet firearms like AK-47 rifle variants or Scorpion machine pistols — therefore, "bad" guns. "Advanced" is a keyword for another category of typical "bad" gun trait.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The "translucent screen" variation, in the firing squad scene.
• Government Drug Enforcement: Prozium, an emotion suppression drug, is mandated to all citizens in Libria.
• Grand Inquisitor Scene: The movie finishes on one of these, with the added bonus that the official doesn't believe it either.
• Gun Fu: The Grammaton Clerics' signature fighting style combines this and Gun Kata.
• Gun Kata: The Trope Maker and Trope Namer. The Grammaton Clerics use this as a scientifically-proven Gun Fu fighting style, basically Xanatos Speed Chess with guns. The style was choreographed by a Karate expert, and you can see the Clerics often adopt very karate-like stances while practicing or fighting. However, Preston and DuPont are the only ones we see doing any actual Gun Kata: Partridge is deliberately letting Preston do all the work, Brandt's only on-screen shooting is with an assault rifle, and none of the other Clerics bother.
• Guns Akimbo: John Preston wields dual pistols (Berettas) and is quite literally untouchable by mooks. In an early scene, he jumps into a crossfire and stands calmly in one place (then again, with emotions held under check, he can't quite panic or anything) while the opposition fires away with automatic weaponry and fails to hit him. The film attempts to explain this by inventing a fighting style known as Gun Kata, which teaches its practitioners to seek out locations in a fight where there is minimum probability of getting shot at (and it's not just "behind cover"). In a later fight, Preston reloads by a mechanism that inserts fresh magazines into the guns from his sleeves.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: Sweeper shooting dogs in the pen is armed with Walther WA 2000, which is a sniper rifle, but he uses it as if it was a shotgun, pretending that he is racking nonexistent pump after each shot.
• Helpless Window Death: When Preston learns that Mary is about to be executed by incineration, he runs to intercept it, but gets there seconds too late and can only make eye contact through a window in the crematorium door. It provokes a Heroic BSoD and aligns him firmly with La Résistance.
• Heroic Bloodshed: Following a lawman's struggle between loyalty to his regime and the righteous outlaws... and lots and lots of bullets.
• Heroic BSoD: John suffers quite a few times: in a flashback, after his wife's immolation, despite being on Prozium, reliving the memories after withdrawing from Prozium, and then after Mary's execution he breaks down crying in front of the Hall of Justice.
• Heroic Second Wind: Noticeably averted, with the hero killing the Big Bad without breaking a sweat, and the only concession to show that the Big Bad is a credible threat is that he doesn't die instantly, unlike everyone else that came before. In the commentary the director even mentions this trope, and states he thinks it's stupid and unnecessary for the hero to lose to the Big Bad in round 1 because the audience already knows the hero is going to win anyway.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Tetragrammaton planned to use Preston as bait for the Resistance leaders. It works too well — he joins the Resistance and turns on them.
• Hope Spot:
  • Preston rushes to the execution chamber to prevent Mary's death, but arrives seconds too late.
  • Preston's revolution was a trap set up by the authority.
• Huge Holographic Head: Messages from the leader of the totalitarianist regime, "Father", do this with massive screens throughout the city. Subverted in that the real Father died years before. DuPont has been impersonating him since then.
• Humans Are Flawed: The entire reason for the plot was that human emotions were a flaw and the cause of 'man's inhumanity to man.' The ending, while portrayed positively, never exactly comes clear on whether restoring human emotion is a good thing.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: After they rounded up the insurgents, Brandt asks Preston to take the honors of the execution, fully knowing that this would put Preston in a tight spot.
• Individuality Is Illegal: Along with the emotion suppression, one of Father's many broadcasted lectures says that his government strives to abolish individuality, with every person living a life of perfect unity with everyone else. From what's seen, the law-abiding members of society do seem to live very similar (very drab, empty) lives. The "sense offenders" who break their law by not taking the drug Prozium to suppress emotions ultimately take this down through their resistance, leading to an armed revolt.
• Interesting Situation Duel: The climax features a gun duel. It's awesome by virtue of the range being two feet; the combatants fire at each other with pistols while simultaneously trying to hit the other's gun away.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves
  Father: Intrinsically humans, as creatures of the Earth, were drawn inherently always back to one thing, war. And thus we seek to correct not the symptom, but the disease itself. We have sought to shrug off individuality, replacing it with conformity. Replacing it with sameness, with unity, allowing each man, woman, and child in this great society to lead identical lives.
• Ironic Echo: Done with a wink. Preston winks at Brandt when arresting him for the crimes he did by virtue of the switched gun. Later when Brandt turns the table and captures Preston, he returns the wink with a big smile.
• Irony: The culmination of the film involves Preston, an agent of the Resistance, attaining what the Tetragrammaton has been seeking since its founding — total emotional mastery — without Prozium. Unfortunately for the Tetragrammaton, this control manifests as the ability to channel his near-volcanic anger into an awesome display of precision ass-kicking.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Preston is able to press information about Jurgen from a teacher at the university by throwing him onto a desk and performing an Angry Collar Grab.
• Katanas Are Just Better: There is no good reason for DuPont's personal guards to carry katanas.
• Kick the Dog: The Sweepers are shown gunning down fleeing and captured Resistance members, and dogs.
• Knight Templar: The government of Libria, who believe themselves to be upholding what is good for humanity by destroying all works of art and suppressing all emotions, in exchange to bringing peace and equality to the land.
• Land of One City: The state of Libria seems to be just one Mega City and its environs.
• La Résistance: Who else but the aptly named "Resistance"?
• Licked by the Dog: Several minutes after Preston cries at Beethoven, a puppy licks his face and brings out his compassion — to the point where he ends up killing a dozen men after he decides to keep it (of course, the fact that said men caught him in possession of an illegal item, were about to arrest him for it and already aimed their guns at him might have had something to do with it).
• Little "No": "No. Not without incident."
• Living Is More than Surviving: Mary's stated reason for being a sense offender; John, notably, is unable to provide a satisfactory answer to her question of why he's alive, likely because he's never actually thought about it.
• Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot: The contraband in the opening raid, containing books and paintings, is exposed after some floorboards are pulled away.
• The Lost Lenore: John's wife was executed in the past. This is one of the elements that prompt John to become a rebel.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • Near the end, DuPont echoes the Yeats poem that Partridge was reading near the beginning: "You're treading on my dreams."
  • Before shooting Partridge, Preston mentions the anger and hatred felt by sense offenders. Partridge replies, "A heavy cost. I pay it gladly." When DuPont asks Preston whether killing a feeling human is worth the price, guess how Preston replies?
  • When Brandt is sparring with Preston, he states that "it's my job to know what you're thinking". When Preston finds out his son is also feeling and knew that he became a sense offender, the son says "you forget, it's my job to know what you're thinking."
  • When Preston starts following Partridge's path, he repeats some of his excuses. "They miss things, sometimes..."
• Meaningful Look: Preston and the leader of the insurgents who are put against the wall secret nod at each other before the execution as a way of saying "The revolution will carry on".
• Meaningful Name: "Libria", the name of the totalitarian state, is close to "Libra", balance in Latin, evoking what they claim as their aim — social harmony. So does Equilibrium, which in the film is the center where the emotion-suppressing Prozium is issued to citizens.
  • Likewise John Preston, evoking the mythical figure Prester John. His last name means priest (priest town, really), referring to his rule as a Cleric, and Prester John was the legendary ruler of a Christian nation in the mysterious east, hinting at John's role in leading the revolution to success.
• Mobstacle Course: Preston does this at least twice, one time without a real purpose besides just wanting to be alone.
• Mona Lisa Smile: The Mona Lisa is one of the paintings that is captured and burned in the opening. Adding to the tragedy is that the main character, initially a ruthless enforcer of the totalitarian regime, has no idea about the significance of it.
• Monumental Damage: On a small scale. Although all art is forbidden, the cache of art that is found and burned includes The Mona Lisa, perhaps the most famous and recognizable painting in the world.
• Mook Chivalry: A fair number of gun battles Preston engages in run on this, as he preoccupies himself with a small portion of the total number of armed enemies while the ones he's not dealing with do nothing until he's close enough to put them down.
• Murder by Cremation: Any imprisoned "sense offenders" eventually suffer this fate. Preston witnesses this first-hand when he sees Mary's execution.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • When Preston rewatches the recording of his wife's incineration, this time being able to feel. His face becomes a mask of complete and utter horror when he sees how he had just stood then, uncaring and cold, while she had been sent to a gruesome fiery death.
  • Earlier than that, the first time he kills a man after he goes off Prozium.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers make it seem like Preston's wife was arrested recently and his motivation is pure revenge.
• Nothing Up My Sleeve: Not only does Preston keep his guns up his sleeves, he also has a mechanism that will reload his weapons with fresh magazines from up his sleeves.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The leadership of Libria still runs with the propaganda that their totalitarian dystopia is necessary to stamp out human conflict, but if they ever did believe in it themselves, by the point of the film they are just interested in perpetuating their own power and consider themselves above the rules they set for others. DuPont is a sense offender, and Brandt at least behaves a lot like one.
• Offhand Backhand: Pretty much any shot Preston makes falls under this trope since Gun Kata eliminates the need to actually aim.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The technician administering Preston's polygraph test, when the machine flatlines.
  • Also the Puppy dog shootout scene:
    Sweeper 1: Oh—!
    Sweeper 2: —Fuck!
    [BLAM BLAM]
    Sweeper Captain: What?
    [SHICK-SHICK]
    Sweeper Captain: Ah shit, shoot him shoot him shoot him!
  • DuPont gets progressively more unnerved as he watches Preston defeat each layer of his defenses. The look on his face when John dispatches an entire team of his personal, katana-wielding bodyguards in about five seconds is just priceless.
• Out-Gambitted: After all the dust of the twists and turns has settled, it's Preston with guns up his sleeves who wins out over his opponents' scheme.
• The Pawns Go First: During the Final Battle at his office, DuPont doesn't lift a finger until no one on his side is left standing.
• Pistol-Whipping:
  • The scene where Preston tries to let the sense-offenders escape. The resulting beatdown leaves several Sweepers dead.
  • It plays into the Gun Kata principle that the whole gun is a weapon, and the gun even has retractable spikes on the grip bottom for maximum pain.
• Police State: Police are everywhere and people get killed by the Clerics without a proper trial.
• Pose of Supplication: Preston collapses after seeing Mary burned alive... and it's how he's caught.
• Praetorian Guard: The dictator of Libria is protected by a special cadre of katana-wielding soldiers when Preston breaks down the door to his office. They're completely ineffectual against Preston, however.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "No, not without incident!"
• Precious Puppy: Preston rescues one after his withdrawal from Prozium.
• Propaganda Machine: Father's lectures are constantly being broadcasted around Libria, from giant TV screens on outside walls of buildings, inside homes or workplaces and on the zeppelins flying overhead. At least we see that those in the home can be turned off, unlike in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the finale, Preston destroys the control center for this, shutting them all down.
• Putting on the Reich: Libria, whose Hitler Youth-esque candidates for Cleric training wear very fascist-inspired outfits, as well as the basic soldiers consisting of either riot police or helmeted goons in Gestapo-esque trenchcoats. The flag of Libria is also very similar to the Nazi flag. Moreover, the film was shot in several buildings of the Nazi era (the Olympic Stadium of Berlin, Deutschlandhalle, and Berlin Tempelhof Airport).
• Rage Within the Machine: At first, Partridge, Preston's partner... and then Preston himself, at first trying to get the regime to soften its heavy-handed execution of all Sense Offenders, and eventually openly rebelling.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mary gives one (with a dose of What the Hell, Hero?) to Preston during her interrogation.
• Reflective Eyes: Done twice with Preston. First we see Mary's last moments when zooming into his eye and again at the end when we see the explosion amidst the city reflected in his eye.
• Rejected Apology: Partridge, upon being outed as a sense offender, rejects Preston's apology for what's going to happen to him not out of any malice, but because he knows that Preston can't actually mean it.
  Preston: Then I'm sorry.
  Partridge: No you're not. You don't even know the meaning. It's just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt.
• Reverse Grip: Preston sparring with Brandt and, later, fighting the guards surrounding Father in the finale.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Preston carries this out — minus the "roaring" part, of course.
• Rule of Cool: Most of the gunfights follow this.
  • The very idea of Gun Kata is that, through analysis of thousands of gunfights, it has been determined that the positioning of enemies can be abstracted down to statistical probabilities. Thus, Clerics employ martial arts poses to fire at where their enemies are most likely to be without needing to aim, while simultaneously positioning themselves to make themselves a smaller target. It does not take much thought to recognize that this principle would really not actually work. Further, many of Preston's usages of Gun Kata, while looking very stylized and flashy, would not be very practical.
  • Through the film, Conservation of Ninjutsu and Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy are in effect to ensure that, no matter how many enemies Preston faces, they will either never fire at him or will be terrible shots. This is particularly pronounced in the final action sequence, where dozens of guards don't even have their weapons in-hand when Preston arrives (even though the Big Bad knew he was coming), and they either don't shoot at Preston or can't hit him even though he's in full unobstructed view in a brightly lit hallway.
  • Also, in that final action sequence, Preston throws a pair of weighted ammo clips down the hall, and they somehow land in the exact right position for him to drop down and reload his guns when he needs them. Not to mention Preston has room up his sleeves both for his guns and auto-reloading mechanisms holding extra clips that slot perfectly into his guns when he tilts them the right way.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Probably the only reason the drug ampules look like bullets and the drug is injected with an apparatus that looks like a gun.
  • Viviana's execution robe is blood red, the color of martyrs.
  • Father extols Prozium as the "opiate of the masses", a frequent variation on Karl Marx's view of religion as the "opium of the people".
  • Check out the Tetragrammaton muzzle flashes◊.
• Same Story, Different Names: Writer-director Kurt Wimmer's follow-up project Ultraviolet (2006) rehashed most of the basic elements of this film. William Fichtner even appears in both.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Apparently, once you are far enough up the ranks, taking Prozium is not required.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Librian TV operators' response to Preston's Death Glare.
• Second-Person Attack: After seeing Mary being executed, Preston collapses in front of the Hall of Justice. Then Brandt comes to arrest him and punches Preston in the face shown from the latter's POV.
• Secret Room: Sense offenders are prone to hide their "kink" from the police in secret rooms behind the walls of their habitats. Clerics are trained to find these spots.
• Sheath Strike: Preston does this near the end of the film, impaling two mooks at the same time with a katana and its saya. It helps that, during the fight, the saya had been sliced to a point by another mook's katana.
• Shoo the Dog: Preston tries to shoo away a puppy he saved, but the puppy refuses to leave him and keeps barking and scratching the side of the car as he tries to leave. Preston eventually allows the puppy to stay and hides it in the trunk of the car. He then defeats an entire army of Clerics singlehandedly after the puppy was discovered. No one messes with Preston's puppy.
• Shot at Dawn: A group of insurgents is put against a wall and shot by a firing squad.
• Shout-Out:
  • The shots of the workers going to work in the morning, hanging their head, in similar clothes, is reminiscent of similar shots in Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang.
  • Preston wields his katana in a Reverse Grip similar to Zatoichi.
  • Fifteen seconds before the end of the movie features an explosion amidst the city reflected in Preston's eye. Sound familiar?
• Single-Stroke Battle: Preston's fight with Brandt.
• So Much for Stealth: Preston almost fools the police who want to inspect the trunk of his car with the puppy inside. But as they are about to leave, the puppy gives off a yelp which causes the charade to collapse.
• Steel Eardrums: Guns go off right next to characters' heads repeatedly. This never leads to any real consequences.
• Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle:
  Polygraph Operator: How would you say would be the easiest way to take a weapon away from a Grammaton Cleric?
  Brandt: You ask him for it.
• Stock Quotes: The film's chosen poetry snippet is the last few lines of "Aed Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by Yeats:
  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
  I have spread my dreams under your feet;
  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
• Straw Vulcan: The ideological mainstream believes that emotion creates "man's inhumanity to man"; any attempt to evoke feelings in oneself or others is punishable by summary execution.
• Surprisingly Moving Song: John Preston uncovers a secret stash of emotionally stimulating contraband (literature, art, music, etc) and he takes the time to listen to an old record of Ludwig van Beethoven. Having spent most of his life under an emotion-suppressing drug enforced by the state, it moves him to tears.
• Take That!:
  • The way items are rated, banned, and destroyed is a dig at the MPAA rating system.
  • Somewhat less subtle is Father extolling "the revolutionary precept of the hate crime" — as in, dubbing the "hate" the important part of the "crime", which makes Thoughtcrime Not So Crazy Anymore.
• Tear Off Your Face: Preston kills Brandt by slicing his face off with a katana.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Pretty much the philosophy driving the movie. Aside from the overkill in combat, you really don't need dual flamethrowers to destroy a single painting.
• These Hands Have Killed: Preston, once he goes off the Prozium. When a wounded insurgent runs into him and collapses dead, Preston has an emotional reaction after looking at the blood on his gloves.
• This Cannot Be!: Brandt utters "That's impossible" when it turns out that the weapon used to kill in the Nethers was his and not Preston's.
• Thoughtcrime: "Sense Offense". People are burned alive simply for experiencing emotion, while things such as art or poetry which can spark our emotions are also illegal. They're also burned when confiscated.
• Tin Man: Many of Preston's opponents who are supposedly on Prozium display plenty of emotions, Oh, Crap! being a favorite. This is foreshadowing that they aren't on it.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Sweepers in the Nethers scene. Do not try to use your Walther WA2000 within three feet of a known Gun Kata expert, never mind that if you do fire you'll probably kill your mate standing on his opposite side.
• Trailers Always Spoil: "Not without incident." The trailer doesn't provide enough context for it to be a real spoiler, but you'll know where it's coming in the movie, and it was clearly intended to be unexpected.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Four words: "No. Not without incident."
  • To be precise, the moment the polygraph flatlined. It was meant to indicate Preston entering a state of 'mushin' (no-mind, common among highly trained martial artists before combat), essentially shutting off unnecessary systems and diverting all brain processing power to asskicking mode. Yes, he was literally so furious that his mind become perfectly clear.
• Troubled Backstory Flashback: The arrest and execution of Preston's wife. Bonus points for her being more colorful than everything else in the memory.
• Tyrannicide: John Preston commits it when he kills Vice-Counsel DuPont, who became the real leader of Libria after Father passed away.
• Undercrank: This gets quite noticeable in some fight scenes.
• Unorthodox Reload:
  • Preston has some sort of device up his sleeves (literally) that will reload his pistols for him when they run empty.
  • During the final shootout, Preston is confronted by a hallway of machine-gun Mooks. He throws two magazines of ammunition halfway down the hallway, then starts shooting, running out of ammo exactly where the two magazines landed, reloads and continues gunning 'em down.
  • And the one guy assuming his Walther WA2000 is a shotgun, racking a nonexistent pump.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The Tetragrammaton Council (and Father) think of the lack of emotion among Libria's populace as a fair trade for the near-eradication of all crime. It's later revealed, however, that at least DuPont and probably many more are secret hypocrites about this.
• Villain Ball:
  • The Big Bad lets Preston, the highly trained Cleric who has killed multiple Faceless Goons and proven himself a serious threat, walk into the main headquarters without even bothering to search him for weaponry. He then tells Preston the master plan, and as soon as his villainous monologue ends, Preston pulls out some firearms and fights his way to the boss's room. In a deleted scene, it would've shown earlier that the metal detectors are at the next door Preston walks through after taking the lie detector, which raises the question of why they put the anti-gun security measure there instead of before the room they planned to spring their trap in.
  • In addition to just shooting Preston after they captured the Resistance, they also could have shot him up with more Prozium to remove his emotions again.
• Wham Shot: The close-up on the polygraph flatlining.
• Writing Around Trademarks: In the finished film, the emotion-deadening drug is called "Prozium"; in at least some drafts of the script, it was instead named "Librium".
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: At the end, DuPont tries to convince Preston not to shoot him because he himself is feeling too. But then Preston has a Flashback Cut to Mary's death and fires a bullet into DuPont's chest.
• Zeppelins from Another World: In the background, though they're never given any focus.

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