"Equilibrium"
The market research company I work for screened "Equilibrium" on Tuesday, May 1. It’s a new sci-fi film currently scheduled for a December 2001 release. It’s about a society that suppresses all emotion in its citizens by forcing them to take a drug called "librium," enforces anti-emotion law by banning all art, music, aesthetics, etc., executing "sense offenders" in incinerators, etc. (Hmmm….a society that represses all emotion. Where do they GET these ideas?) It features Christian Bale from "American Psycho," as one of the "clerics," the police who enforce these laws, and when he misses his morning dose, he begins to experience emotion, and comes to sympathize with the Resistance.

Taye Diggs from "Go" and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," plays Brandt, his partner, Emily Watson plays Bale’s love interest, William Fichtner (he played the screw-up in "The Perfect Storm," the undercover cop in "Go," the astronaut ordered to blow everyone up if necessary in "Armageddon," etc.) plays the leader of the Resistance, Angus MacFayden (the Earl of Bruce in "Braveheart") plays the vice consul, Bale’s supervisor, and Sean Bean (009 from "Goldeneye") is Partridge, another cleric.


WARNING: MAJOR GIGANTIC SPOILERS AHEAD (Though I did manage to camouflage them):

Notes:
I liked it a lot, as did many in the focus group, who compared it to "1984", "Brave New World", "A Clockwork Orange", "THX-1138", "Planet of the Apes" and "The Matrix" (for a couple of REALLY COOL fight scenes). The Internet Movie Database cited a quote calling it a "slick retooling of Farenheit 451." I highly recommend it when it comes out.

The film was originally titled "Librium," after the real-life drug featured in the film, but changed it after legal problems from the drug’s manufacturer. Oddly, it retains that name in the film. (More below.)

Favorite moments:
The scene where the dogs are being killed, and one runs up to Preston for sanctuary was definitely one of those audience "Awwwwww" moments.

When Preston seemingly turns the tables on one of his adversaries toward the end of the film, people in the test audience were cheering (myself included).

The son’s revelation to his father about what he’d been doing since his mother’s death.

I wasn’t the only one who raised an eyebrow when one guy in the movie got his face sliced off.

The Nits
How did the Powers That Be in this society get everyone to start taking this drug? It seems incredibly hard to swallow (no pun intended), and it seem to be a necessary question for the movie’s exposition to answer. I hope that when it comes out, they will have answered this question. Since propaganda drones on in the background throughout the movie, that would be a good place to insert this bit of exposition.

Okay, so if this is a real-life drug, does it have the effect, in real-life, of suppressing emotion? If not, is this a nit, since the film is depicting a drug doing something it can’t in real life? Or does the movie assume that it’s a different drug with the same name?

The conflict begins when Preston drops his morning dose of Librium, and decides not to take a replacement dose. Seems a bit too easy for people in this society to break free of this thing, doesn’t it? Are you telling me this is the FIRST time anyone didn’t take their dose?

Some people, such as myself, found it hard to believe that the Clerics didn’t find the Resistance’s headquarters, given where it was located.

When Brandt cold cocks someone around the final act of the film, (utilizing the point of view of the victim on the ground looking up at him), he visibly emotes. I guess it is kinda difficult to depict a society with no emotion, and have someone in that society using violence without manifesting some grimace.

Toward the end of the film, Preston goes to meet the Father, all dressed up in a white dress uniform, but cannot take his guns because the security is so tight. So how the hell did he smuggle in those two guns in his sleeves? Didn’t they pat this guy down or run him through a metal detector?

Some people in the focus group expressed the opinion that the final fight scenes were both unrealistic and ripped off from "The Matrix." As to the rip-off accusation, no one stopped mid air, willed bullets to stop in mid air, nor were any of those "3-D panning shots" in "The Matrix" were used. The scenes were very dynamically choreographed. If these people saw some of John Woo’s movies for the first time, not knowing they were old films, they might’ve thought those scenes were ripped off too. As to the believability argument, granted, but putting aside the aforementioned premise of this society’s government getting its populace to take this drug, sometimes when a movie has an overpowering effect on me, my suspension of disbelief sometimes enables me to be taken on a ride without analyzing a film as much as I would during subsequent viewings on TV. I liked these scenes. I merely assumed that Preston was a highly adept martial artists/marksman, and that living a life without emotion may have contributed to a precision and adeptness in such things. I can’t analyze it, I was just blown away.

Another opinion expressed was that we needed to see more of the Resistance's actions at the very end of the movie, not just explosions to indicate them.

SEE IT FREE THIS THURSDAY!

The market research company I work for is screening it again this Thursday, June 7, in Secaucus NJ. If any of you out there who live in the New York City/Northeren N.J. area (Merat, Margie and Herbie, take notice), and you can get to Secaucus, NJ (It's easier to get to from the Lincoln Tunnel), and would like to see this movie (and affect the final cut by giving your opinion of it at the end), let me know by responding to this post A.S.A.P.

SEE THIS FILM FREE ON TUE!

The market research company I work for is screening "Equilibrium" again for Dimension/Miramax in Secaucus, NJ (That's where Claire Raymond from The Neutral Zone(TNG) said she was from, by the way) on Tuesday, June 19th. If anyone in the northern NJ or NYC area (Herbie and Margie, take note), and you want to see this film for free and give your opinion of it afterwards for market research purposes (and possibly even be a part of the focus group afterwards), let me know by responding to this post, and we'll arrange to get you guys passes and show up at the screening.

Tonight, the market research company I worked for conducted another screening of this movie, and it was AWESOME! It was even WAY better than the cut I saw on May 1st, and some added scenes even made it better, and plugged up some of the plot holes that I noticed in the first cut. It was easier to enjoy the movie and keep track of nits because, having seen it before, I was prepared, and was less confused about some of the premises. There are some times in this post where I make comparisons to the May 1st cut, but keep in mind that my memory of that cut may not be perfect.

One of the things I pointed out during my first post for this movie was how the fight scenes were great, but how many people thought they were ripped off Matrix, and my disagreement with that. What I didn’t go into was the plausibility of these scenes. John Preston, (played perfectly by Christian Bale) armed with twin handguns, is able, during three or four scenes, to take on large groups of heavily armed opponents, and evade their fire, supposedly using a combination of extremely precise stances and gestures. Needless to say, this was seen as implausible (though I was impressed by it on an entertainment level). The cut I saw tonight contained a scene not in the May 1st cut, where we see a group of Cleric trainees doing what the vice-consul calls "gun kata." Kata, of course, is a series of martial arts movements and stances comprising a form. The vice consul explains expositionally that there is a precise science to predict armed opponents moves and effectively countering them, involving geometric mental calculations, etc., perhaps an aspect of not having emotions. Some people in the focus group tonight still thought it implausible, but I think the audience found it a bit more plausible. (See related nit below.)

Differences in the two cuts
John Preston, played by Christian Bale, has a son and daughter in the film, but either my memory is playing tricks on me, or a character was added to the film, because I don’t seem to recall a daughter in the May 1st cut.

I don’t think the scene in tonight’s cut where Yurgen is arrested was in the May 1st cut.

Nice moments:

When Preston asks Partridge about a bit of evidence in the police car in the beginning of the movie, right after the first sweeper scene, Partridge’s answer is an indicator to us and to Preston that something may be up, and Preston’s identical use of Partridge’s exact words later to Brandt are a nice touch.

In revisiting the nit I mentioned in my first post about how it was too easy for people to break free of this drug, and that what happened to Preston’s dose should’ve happened to A LOT more people, and that this society should’ve been broken A LONG time ago, I’d like to elaborate on it.
-----First of all, what the writers’ should’ve done was establish some system of built-in failsafes and other measures that would prevent most people from neglecting to take the drug, and that slipping through these protocols would require a freak confluence of events that would not happen on an everyday basis, and show how it did occur to Preston. It would only require one person for this to happen to in order to start the Resistance, and that person, whoever it was, (It could’ve been Yurgen or a predecessor), deliberately began sabotaging these measures to recruit more people. Perhaps they could have people receive their doses via an implant that automatically releases the drug into the systme, much like the ones recently developed for diabetics to release insulin, rather than an oral dose that would be too easy to not take. The movie could show a sequence of events whereby Preston’s implant is damaged, not upgraded, not refilled, etc., which would be far more believable than simply accepting that everyone else willingly takes it without incident.
-----Second, the movie seems to imply that when one has no emotions, that that person would be subservient to a dictatorial authority, as if the natural instinct for freedom and self-determination is somehow emotion-specific, which I would disagree with. Let’s say mothers and fathers have tell their kids to take their drug. What’s to stop a kid, even one already on the drug, to develop a curiosity about what happens when he or she doesn’t take the drug, and to secretly stop taking it to see what happens? Why does the movie draw an equation between collective slave mentalities and logic, and between arguments for freedom and emotion?

In the beginning of the movie, on the morning after Preston loses his dose of the drug, we see the son and daughter eating breakfast. The daughter flips dry pieces of her cereal off the bowl and onto the table. I wondered if this meant that she was not taking her drug, and feeling emotion, but nothing is mentioned about this by dialogue, or anything else in the movie.

When Preston begins to feel emotion, we see his horror at seeing the furnaces, the fear he feels when he dashes to the bathroom to take some Equa(sp?) because these new emotions feel bad; his listening to Beethoven in Mary O’Brien’s secret room, his sniffing her red ribbon, and his feeling of failure when he leaves the furnace near the last act of the film.

When searching Mary O’Brien’s apartment, Preston says the frame she has on the mirror in the corridor is contraband, and orders it destroyed. Preston then finds the hidden room with all the other contraband. If O’Brien knew what was illegal, and decided to hide it, why didn’t she do the same with the mirror frame? Why leave it out in the open like that, in a corridor that faces the apartment front door, knowing that anyone who happened by, like a delivery man for example, could see it and report her?

When rummaging through O’Brien’s contraband, Preston puts a vinyl record on an old-fashioned phonograph, and flips the apparatus with the needle over, so that the needle is placed on the record, and turns it on to listen to it. I found it odd that he would know how to operate this device so easily, and how to place the needle on it, etc.

One of the scenes that conveys how Preston is feeling emotion is the first one where we see him at his office desk. An overhead shot of three desks, with Preston’s in the middle, shows how all the objects on everyone’s desk, (the blotter, the stapler, the tray of paper clips, etc.) is supposedly lined up perfectly, and in the exact same way as everyone else’s desk. Preston, desiring individuality, begins rearranging his desk, beginning with the stapler. The funny thing is, in the overhead shot of the desks, Preston’s stapler, is actually already slightly misaligned with the other objects, compared with how the staplers on the other two desks are.

When Preston goes back to the Resistance hideout the second time, Yurgen shows him a remote controlled trap door that leads to the more massive real underground hideout. First of all, given Preston’s psychic-like ability to detect trap doors and hidden caches of contraband, as he did in the very beginning of the film, and with Mary’ O’Brien, why didn’t he detect this "real" hideout, especially given that it has openings to let light in from outside?

Second, once Yurgen knew that Preston knew of their location, why didn’t he immediately evacuate everyone out of the hideout, even if he didn’t yet know where the larger hold was? Didn’t it occur to Yurgen that if Preston found the false hold, he or his superiors might eventually find the larger real one? Sure, some may point out that Yurgen knew that Preston was feeling (more on that below), but first, that’s hardly a firm basis to conclude there’s no danger in letting the Resistance remain there, and second, even if he knew Preston was on their side, there’s no guarantee that Preston himself would not be found out, and that the authorities would be able to extract the location of the hideout from him.

When Preston returns to the hideout, Yurgen says that he knows Preston now feels emotion, and even gives a detailed description of how Preston likes to sniff Mary O’Brien’s scented red ribbon. How does Yurgen know this? Is he psychic? If so, shouldn’t this be mentioned?

During Preston’s second visit to the Resistance, Yurgen gives him a polygraph test, which he says detects fluctuations in a person’s emotions. Well, they detect anxiety. They don’t detect any other particular emotion, nor is there any particular emotion present when one is lying. That is why polygraphs are inadmissible in U.S. courts, and, as one person pointed out, why the premise that NextGen’s Deanna Troi can detect mendacity in others because she’s an empath wouldn’t hold true.

Yurgen then tells Preston that they need him to assassinate the Father. Preston tells them that that will change nothing, and I’m inclined to agree. If the Council, and whatever infrastructure that enforces the laws of this society remain, then it wouldn’t matter if the person who founded it died or not. If it did, it would imply that the life of the society would only be as long as the life of its founder, and it that were true, then it obviously wasn’t a very strong system. (Genghis Khan’s empire crumbled after his death for this very reason.) Yurgen asserts that when the other Resistance leaders find out the Father is dead (and he claims that their network is vast) they will set off bombs that have been planted for some time in key Equa(sp?) factories. Now it’s possible that I’m remembering this bit of dialogue incorrectly, but I think I got it, and it makes no sense. If the Resistance has planted so many bombs at so many vital places, again, the Father’s death should have nothing to do with it. Assassinating a powerful leader may have advantages in certain circumstances, but that isn’t the case here. There would be no psychological impact to the act, for example, since everyone has no emotions in this society, and what is later revealed about the Father toward the end of the film confirms that what happens to the original founder of this society is irrelevant. If these guys have so many bombs placed at the drug factories, then they should set them off and be done with it.

After Preston leaves the Resistance hideout after the second encounter, Yurgen catches up with him on the street, and in a side alley, demands that he help them. The disagreement is, of course, tense, and I thought that it was dumb of them to conduct this discussion out in the open where anyone might happen upon them. Not surprisingly, someone does see them.

When Preston is examining the drug injector in his son and daughter’s room as they sleep, his son exchanges words with him before saying, "Good night Dad," and I could’ve sworn that Preston’s son addressed him as "John" in the beginning of the film, and wondered if either my memory was wrong, or if this was a slipup by the writer, or a deliberate indicator of something. During the focus group, one of the respondents confirmed it, saying that she herself noticed it, and saw it as the son’s way of trying to let his father know, perhaps in an indirect way, of what was going on.

Brandt, played by Taye Diggs, emotes often during the film. He displays a wide grin when, during his kendo sparring match with Preston, Preston shoves him up against a column, and Brandt tells him about the investigation into the killing of the sweeper team at the Nether. After Preston falls down to the ground outside the furnace after the execution, Brandt emotes when punching Preston. He emotes after having dragged Preston into the Cleric headquarters and denouncing him in front of everyone. He emotes in the vice-consul’s office when the guards arrest him after thinking he killed the sweeper team. What’s interesting is that the vice consul speculates that Brandt feels emotion, and is a sense offender himself because of this facial expression, which the vice-consul refers to as his "passion," but no further indication is given as to why Brandt is like this.

Preston decides to stash his drug doses in a space behind his medicine cabinet. When the vice-consul sends a sweeper team to his apartment for a cursory search, Preston races home to remove the hidden vials before the sweepers find them, but he finds them missing. His son then shows up with them in his hand, telling his father that he should be more careful. I don’t get it. Why even bother stashing them? Why not just flush the drug down the toilet, and crush the vials into a garbage disposal or something?

(This scene was in tonight’s cut, but not, I believe, in the 5/1/01 cut): After Preston seemingly turns the tables on Brandt, and requests to see the Father, we see a sweeper team arresting Yurgen and his follower, as Preston prepares to assassinate the Father, and it appears that Preston himself turned them in, even though he’s secretly on their side. This scene proceeds as if this is all a part of Preston’s plan. How does turning Yurgen in fit into Preston’s plan to kill the Father? Or did I remember this scene incorrectly?

After it is revealed that Preston’s framing of Brandt was known to the vice-consul and the Father, and that they knew all along that Preston was connected with the Resistance, the Father states that it was necessary to get someone who could feel like them in order to infiltrate them. The explanation given makes it sound as if they somehow engineered Preston to develop emotion, and hook up with the Resistance, but this is bogus. Preston developed emotion because he dropped his morning interval and stopped taking the drug altogether, something the Father/the authorities could not have any knowledge of or control over.

I reiterate my nit above about Preston being able to get two handguns into the Father’s quarters (or the polygraph room, to be precise) even after turning his weapons in. Wasn’t he frisked? At the very least, they could’ve said he passed through a metal detector, and that the guns Preston had were porcelain, and undetectable by metal detectors, or something similar.

I pointed out above how some scenes added to tonight's cut of the film made Preston's ability to blow away armed groups of guards was made slightly more plausible, but as much as I enjoyed them, even I have to acknowledge that the one at the end where he takes on two rows of armed guards in the Father's lair is impossible. Let's say he takes on the first five or six sets of gurards. While blowing away these first sets of guards, the last sets of guards at the end of the line should be able pick off Preston from where they're standing. I mean, C'Mon all they have to do is fire at the guy! He's moving toward them in a straight line, and doesn't even begin jumping up in the air until the end anyway, so it wouldn't be hard to pick him off.

In the Father’s office in the last scene of the movie, there is a large transparent globe with opaque continents. What planet is this? The land masses look nothing like those on Earth, and since this movie takes place in the 21st century, there’s no way the continents could’ve shifted that much!

In the beginning of the movie, Preston’s son tells him he noticed a friend crying, and asked if he should report him to the authorities. Preston says, "Unquestionably." At the very end of the movie, when the drug factories are exploding, we see the son in school. He hears the explosions, and smiles. I sure hope the Resistance is successful, and there’s not a protracted period of struggle between the Resistance and the Clerics/Sweepers, because if any of the son’s classmates noticed him smile, he’s gonna get a visit from the authorities when he gets home from school!

Oh, one more thing I forgot: When Brandt takes Preston into Cleric headquarters, he accuses him of among other things, "relations with a female," which I assume is some reference to Mary O'Brien. What "relations" is Brandt talking about? Is he implying he had sex with her or something? Or that they dated? Was there a scene cut or something? There were always guards around whenever Preston interrogated her, so how, where and when could this have occured? Or is it merely illegal to have a social friendship with a member of the opposite sex? And if so, then how was Preston allowed to marry his wife? How were their kids born?

I mentioned above that Genghis Khan's empire crumbled after his death because the success of it was tied directly to his personality and talent as a leader, and because he never groomed an effective successor to lead after his death. I meant to say Attila the Hun, not Genghis Khan. I hate it when I get my Mongols mixed.

Also, I know I went into this above regarding the connection between having no emotions and obedience to dictatorships, but the propaganda in the beginning of the film also mentions that there is no conflict over belief, because everyone believes the same thing. Again, would having no emotions mean that everyone agrees and has the same opinions? If the writers of this film wrote for Trek, would they depict Vulcan as not having any disagreements? Logic (or, lack of emotion) does not necessarily lead everyone to the same conclusion. Two or more people can be totally sincere and objective, and still come up with diverse conclusions or scenarios. I have no doubt that scientists who come up with different exact details for the theory of how the moon was formed, or criminologists who come up with different psychological profiles of unknown suspects or ways in which a crime was committed can do so while adhering to the scientific method and keeping their emotions and biases on the side.

It's finally coming out Dec. 6th, and I saw a commercial for it on TV. Unfortunately, there's no trailer for it at apple.com, and everytime I try using the link for the official site listed at upcomingmovies.com, I get a connection failure.

Here's a pic from the film of Preston in the Tetragrammaton.

This only opened in Ireland on Friday last and I really enjoyed it.

(This scene was in tonight’s cut, but not, I believe, in the 5/1/01 cut): After Preston seemingly turns the tables on Brandt, and requests to see the Father, we see a sweeper team arresting Yurgen and his follower, as Preston prepares to assassinate the Father, and it appears that Preston himself turned them in, even though he’s secretly on their side. This scene proceeds as if this is all a part of Preston’s plan. How does turning Yurgen in fit into Preston’s plan to kill the Father? Or did I remember this scene incorrectly?

I believe there was a scene before this where Preston and the vice-consul agreed that someone who had crushed the resistence would be granted an audience with Father as a reward. This was Preston's way of getting to Father.

After killing Father, Preston goes down in an elevator to the control room which displays the holograms of Father throughout the city. As he gets off the elevator, his neck is bleeding profusely from what looks like a sword cut. I don't remember him getting this in the fight in Father's chambers.

About mid-way through the film, vice-consul slams in his fist onto a table in an obvious display of anger; yet Preston doesn't appear to notice.

Luigi, I can't remember the name of the drug in the film but I'm sure it began with a P. I think they changed the name of it since you saw the movie.

Loved the way we were set up for a big fight at the end between Preston and Brandt which lasted two seconds max.

Note: The public image of Father was played by Jon Pertwee who appeared in Dog Soldiers (not sure if that made it to the U.S.)

I believe it was called Prozium, Art.

Two nice touches about this film:
1) Once or twice, when Preston fires his gun, the muzzle flash is in the shape of the Tetragrammaton logo.
2) After the big fight at the end, in the tall shot looking down on Preston in Vice-Consuls office, you can see Brandts face lying on the floor.
Overall, I liked this film. I just didn't think there was enough action, and there were one or two scenes that felt like they were building up to the opening of a big can of whoop-ass, and then didn't. And I hated the puppy dog bit. That said though, when they did throw some action in, it was cooler than cool...... Gun Fu rules.

I just saw this last night. We were reading Brave New World in class last week and one of my fellow students tried to make a case for everyone watching Equilibrium as part of the study. It didn't take, but I ended up seeing it anyway.

In the beginning of the movie, on the morning after Preston loses his dose of the drug, we see the son and daughter eating breakfast. The daughter flips dry pieces of her cereal off the bowl and onto the table. I wondered if this meant that she was not taking her drug, and feeling emotion, but nothing is mentioned about this by dialogue, or anything else in the movie. ~LUIGI NOVI

Right after Preston discovers that his son has been off Prozium, he asks if his sister was too. He smirks and says "Of course!"

Second, the movie seems to imply that when one has no emotions, that that person would be subservient to a dictatorial authority, as if the natural instinct for freedom and self-determination is somehow emotion-specific, which I would disagree with. Let’s say mothers and fathers have tell their kids to take their drug. What’s to stop a kid, even one already on the drug, to develop a curiosity about what happens when he or she doesn’t take the drug, and to secretly stop taking it to see what happens? Why does the movie draw an equation between collective slave mentalities and logic, and between arguments for freedom and emotion? ~LUIGI NOVI

Because the movie is a rather gross over-simplification, obviously
Seriously, one of the reasons my classmate's attempt to equate Equilibrium with Brave New World was that the movie was so lacking in subtlety regarding the set up (and that's compared to a book that's pretty heavy handed itself) Honestly, I can think of a lot of way that the absence of emotion would actually make crimes MORE likely, not less.

Brandt's obvious emotions were a problem for me, too. DuPont's outburst is a little easier to swallow once we find out that he's really in charge. If he makes the rules, then he can probably break them with impunity (like Mustafa Mond in Brave New World) and I guess it could be suggested that he allowed Brant to feel as well. After all, the two do seem to be rather closely connected by the end. However, this answer doesn't really seem that practical, since Brant is running around displaying emotion to EVERYONE rather than just having them in the privacy of his office. Wouldn't that be really dagerous?

Speaking of which, I could swear that I heard the guards pump their guns when DuPont slamed his fist on the desk. Apparently they caught the emotion better than Preston.

On the unrealistic gunplay, I found more than the acrobatics to be a reach. Just before Preston charges into the hall full of solders near the end, he tosses these two nifty "weeble clips" ahead of him for future use. Nice idea, but on the way we see some devices ON HIS ARMS reload the guns automaticaly. If he can do that, does he really need the weebles?

Apparently, no one notices when Preston peels the layer of white stuff off his window. That seems like it would be a pretty obvious indicator that something's up with the guy. Granted, the revelation that his children are feeling explains why they wouldn't report him, but wouldn't the fact that they don't say anything be an indicator to Preston that something's up with them? (Remember his son's behavior when Preston breaks his dose. Even though that must be an act, it's really out of character for him to not notice)

Speaking of whom, how did the son manage to carry that incriminating evidence around in his had without the swarm of investigators all over the apartment noticing?

Preston's aleged ability to detect emotions was never adequately explained. Is THAT what was the bit at the end about the ability to feel without knowing it was about? If so, then how? Also, they never really explain why Preston never caught on to his family being sense offenders until so late in the game.

The Mona Lisa confiscated in the beginning of the film is determined through a scan to be authentic. But when we see the back of it, it looks like a traditional canvas stretched over wooden stretcher bars. The Mona Lisa wasn't painted on canvas. It was painted directly onto wood.

Preston makes a number of dumb moves and mistakes that should've outed him as a sense offender immediately, yet Brandt and the Grammaton never catch on to him. First, he goes out to the Nethers with the puppy, and since he has to show his ID at the city gates, this creates a record of his being out there. He even tells the gate guard that he's going out to the Nethers, and Brandt is shown seeing him leave, with the implication being that he is going to follow Preston. But at the Nethers, Preston slaughters an entire Sweeper team, and Brandt is nowhere to be seen. The next day, Brandt merely mentions the "murders" at the Nethers, what the Grammaton is going to do about it, his own theories on who did it, etc. This is absurd. The authorities know that Preston was there, and they should be able to trace the ammunition taken from the corpses to Preston's guns. Why don't they?
---Then, at the next raid, Preston beats the living tar out of another group of enforcers, shattering their helmet visors, and then takes a group of sense offenders through the building, where they are stopped by Brandt, who congratulates Preston on leading the offenders into their trap. Is Brandt stupid or something? If it was really Preston's intent that the offenders be executed, he would've done it himself when he first caught them, something Preston himself mentioned to the one skeptical offender. Why would Brandt think that Preston would have to "lead" a group of offenders into a trap? Isn't going through all of this trouble---beating up a group of cops and then leading sense offenders to an execution trap instead of just executing himself---a bit convoluted of a plan? Brandt does eventually mention to DuPont the fact that Preston was at the Nethers at the time of the Sweeper team's slaughter, but does so only after he finds Preston crying in front of the Hall of Destruction, which is a far less solid bit of evidence, since Preston can cease crying by the time he is brought before DuPoint, and made a he said/he said argument, which is one of the things he ends up doing.

Why is there such a gaping cavity of pipes and stuff behind Preston's medicine cabinet?

As improbable as the gun kata scenes are, they are so pleasing to the eye to watch. Nevetheless, the one in which Preston advances towards DuPont's office through a hallway lined with Sweepers is ridiculous. He's essentially coming at the door in a straight line, directly toward it, so the Sweepers only have to fire at one spot. Even if the first few get hit, the ones closest to the door just have to pick him off. I would've had Preston duck behind those columns lining that hallway, so that the Sweepers couldn't know which way he'd peak out from behind each one.

And once he gets into DuPont's office, instead of just having a group of guys with swords surround Preston, each just a few feet from him, they should've had snipers pick him off, just like the old guy who told Preston that he'd be tested said there'd be.

Blitz: Apparently, no one notices when Preston peels the layer of white stuff off his window. That seems like it would be a pretty obvious indicator that something's up with the guy.
Luigi Novi: Who's going to know? He doesn't share his room with anyone, and the floor on which his apartment is located is probably high enough that no one would notice. Even if they did, he could simply say that he noticed an imperfection and ripped it off so that it could be replaced.

Blitz: Preston's aleged ability to detect emotions was never adequately explained.
Luigi Novi: It was explained at the beginning of the movie in a way that made it seem like natural, instinctive talent or skill.