Comparisons to “The Matrix” notwithstanding, Ray Bradbury’s novel “Farenheit 451” first came to mind as I watched this, with the burning of art replacing the burning of books in one of the early scenes. Christian Bale did a fine job in the role of a “cleric” who seeks out and destroys those who refuse to give up their emotions in this sterile, drug-numbed world of the future. As others have noted, the “gun katas” are the most memorable new ground broken, and there is swordplay worthy of a Tarentino film. Overall, I enjoyed this and recommend watching it. My main complaint is that it is overly long, which I chalk up to mediocre editing.

By the way—tell me I’m not the only person who found herself humming/singing XTC’s “I’m the Man Who Murdered Love” while watching this!

This film is the answer to the question of what kind of film would result if Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World somehow got ground up together with a martial arts flick and yeah, maybe the Matrix as seasoning and handed over to a first-class art department and a really talented casting director. I know, I know, I never asked that question either, but we don’t always, do we, ask the questions that the film industry wants to answer for us.

That said, I did get a kick out of this film, inconsistent though it is (try as I might, I don’t see how marriage and nuclear families are really possible in a population that chemically supresses emotion, for instance,letting emotion back into your life would automatically give you a passion for kitsch/antiques - or that you would instinctively know how to operate a gramophone, say). It did not keep me guessing, it did not keep me on the edgoe of my seat, it did not leave me scratching my head and pondering the brilliance and wisdom of its ideas - but it did engender in me an admiration for its style.

And this film has a lot of style. As another reviewer has remarked, it’s probably worth watching just for the gun-katas (and cheers to the team who came up with a plausible-seeming explanation for exactly how it is that the Clerics can take on a whole room full of gun-toting loons and kill them all without taking a single hit themselves), and for Christian Bale’s performance. Ever since the ordeal he undertook to make The Machinist, his face and carriage seem to have a lot more gravitas and he uses both to good effect here.

It’s also got a pretty jaw-dropping cast—Taye Diggs, Dominic Purcell, Sean Bean, Sean Pertwee, Angus McFayden, Emily Watson… these are not light-weight B-movie people really, and they took this script seriously.

I know this movie may be shuffled into a bin marked, “Martrix rip-offs”, but that’s frankly just not true. Whatever moron put that movie review onto the cover art does it a hideous disservice. This is not the Matrix. The Matrix is about mathematics reality conceptions – this movie is about beauty and the human soul. This movie did not shake my perceptions to the core of my being. What it did was re-awaken something small but important inside my mind. This movie is a well-acted reminder that the best reasons for living and caring about living are all the same. Life is beauty, and aside from Gothamesque settings and 1984-inspired civil servants, this movie made a simple, almost whispered statement that human spirit alone isn’t enough to live on; you need reason to do so.

And the martial scenes are great, too!

There are some good action sequences in the movie, but I found the premise uncompelling: to stop war, would it be worth eliminating human emotions? I suppose it could be phrased more generally as “would it be worth persecuting/killing a minority in order to eliminate war?” In the movie, it hardly seems like anyone is suffering due to the elimination of emotion. Almost by definition, no one could be, except for the few who refuse to dose themselves with the emotionally deadening medication. (Pets are an exception, apparently; they get slaughtered for having emotional content or emotional temptation or some such thing.)

The movie is inconsistent in keeping to the rather bizarre premise. Characters who are supposed to be dosing themselves frequently display emotion of one sort or another – big grins on the face of Taye Diggs, and Christian Bales’ boss slamming his fist down in anger, are among demonstrations of emotions that should never be seen in such a society.

It’s not really a bad movie, just a bit long. Probably worth watching just to get the concept of “gun katas.”

The movie would have been really good if it just ended 10 minutes before it did. Still, it’s worth watching. While it’s not as good as The Matrix, it’s a good movie in its own right.

what a godawful Matrix clone. The gunfights are nice (if a bit daft) but the movie as a whole is terrible. The excuse I have is that there was nothing else on TV, but honestly, there are millions of ways to waste your time that are better than watching this snorefest.