This action sci-fi thriller is set in a dystopian future in which emotions have been made illegal.

You read that right. More on that below.

I don’t know what (if anything) the film makers have said about their stylistic vision for this film, but visually it is identical to the Matrix trilogy. The plot, however, is built on a different platform of fears.

In the future, emotions are controlled by a mandatory drug citizens are required to take periodically. Anyone suspected to be foregoing their dose is turned in to the authorities and executed.

The Christian Bale character is a model cop (called “cleric”), as upon finding his partner with a book of poetry (all stimulus which might induce an emotional response, or “sense offense,” are illegal), he takes him down with all the poignancy of the Orkin Man stepping on a cockroach. We also get flashbacks which show his own wife was terminated for sense offense as well.

The main catalyst for the plot is when the cleric begins to experience emotions of his own.

I would say the acting is good, but then with the wooden personas of law-abiding citizens in this flick, that’s hard to argue. And of the few emotions displayed throughout the film, most were displayed by the last person it made any sense to have show them: Bale’s even colder new partner, played by Taye Diggs.

Either Diggs was auditioning for a toothpaste commercial, or the director had a huge blind spot. All his mugging actually annoyed me with its anomaly. We’re supposed to believe that Bale is in danger because Diggs suspects he’s “sense offending” when it’s Diggs who is the obvious sense offender from where the audience sits and Bale hides his emotions fairly well.

There were some suspenseful scenes and plot twists, so if you can suspend disbelief, it truly will be a “thriller” for you.

The “gun katas” practiced by the clerics look kind of neat, but are rather silly as a combat technique.

That’s not far from descriptive of the movie as a whole: looks neat, but rather silly.

I recently saw Pleasantville, so I’m becoming aware of a new apparent phobia spreading among the Hollywood elite: that fascistic bullies are plotting to take over the world and suppress their feelings.

The symbol dominating this police state is intentionally reminiscent of the Swastika (I guess the film makers never watched film footage of the Nazis,  because it’s kinda hard to miss how emotional/passionate Hitler and his followers were.)

The movie gets really heavy-handed when the Clerics find an illegal kennel and decide to kill off a bunch of puppies.

I’m stopping here. I’ve already spent too much time on this flick.