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Equilibrium is a 2002 science fiction film that was poorly received and underviewed, largely seen as an also-ran to 1999’s The Matrix, which set the tone and style of cyberpunk thrillers to follow. Equilibrium is unjustly forgotten, a sleeper non-hit that deserves revisiting; a thoughtful and condensed statement on huge volumes of preceding dystopian literature and cinema.

Equilibrium plays to the strength of film as a medium in its ability to succinctly put salient points into character narratives that otherwise require full-length novels and academic treatises.