EQUILIBRIUM (2003)

We've seen so many Matrix rip-offs -- from Charlie's Angels to Shrek -- that painstakingly choreographed fight scenes have lost a bit of their luster. But none have been so completely larcenous as writer-director Kurt Wimmer's Fahrenheit 451-esque tale of a futuristic society that has prohibited emotion (and burns the art that fuels it). American Psycho's Bale bone-structures his way through the role of a ''sense offender''-hunting lawman who decides he wants to feel and will murder anyone, including fellow copper Diggs, who gets in his way. Equilibrium isn't necessarily bad -- some of it is conceptually inventive, and the action scenes are interesting if inherently unbelievable. But we've seen it all before.

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