NO AMOUNT OF SPIN CAN HELP THIS ONE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

'EQUILIBRIUM'' is about a future, dystopian world in which people who never display much emotional control are in charge of preventing the general populace from feeling anything, all in the name of eradicating ruinous violence - which the powers that be employ ruthlessly against those who commit ``sense offenses.''

Sounds like a fascinatingly ironic, speculative fiction concept, a sci-fi looking glass through which all who would dictate others' behavior have their own foibles reflected back at them. But nah; in writer-director Kurt Wimmer's hands, it's just naggingly inconsistent and oppressively dumb.

On bad, giganto/minimalist sets that want to evoke ``Metropolis,'' Wimmer scatters ideas borrowed from the key books of the genre, Ray Bradbury's ``Fahrenheit 451,'' George Orwell's ``1984'' and Aldous Huxley's ``Brave New World.'' Then he gussies them all up with enough gunplay, chases and time-lapsed martial arts to make you wish that ``The Matrix'' had never been born - or that this movie was 1/100th as imaginative in its depiction of a future gone coercively awry.

It's after World War III, and surviving humanity has been organized and pacified by an intrusive Big Brother state that keeps the plebes docile with mandatory daily doses of an emotion-suppressing drug called Prozium. The logic is that the same impulses that lead to love and appreciating art also cause anger and violence, and sacrificing the former is a small price to pay for the species' survival without the latter.

Only thing is, hordes of government storm troopers, led by highly trained human fighting machines called clerics, spare no brutality in catching and disposing of rebels who have the temerity to listen to music or read a book or look at the Mona Lisa.

One of the best among these is Cleric John Preston (Christian Bale), who is so robotic a true believer he didn't even bat an eyelash when his own wife was executed for feeling something. But circumstances result in Preston skipping a few meds, getting an emotional rush or two himself (for, in about equal order, a book of poetry, a comely condemned rebel played by Emily Watson, and a puppy). He determines to use his abilities against the fascist regime he's just realized is, well, a fascist regime.

This course of action, naturally, is fraught with peril. Not only does Preston's creepy young son share his dad's ESP-like abilities to reckon when other people are feeling something they shouldn't, but his new clerical partner, Taye Diggs' Brandt, is a savvy careerist out to advance himself at any cost to anyone else.

Wait a minute: Wouldn't ambition like that be an emotionally based impulse? And wouldn't the upper echelons' paranoid need for total control be that, too? Well, yes. But acknowledging that would leave less time for really implausible sequences in which Preston takes out whole rooms full of heavily armed opponents single-handedly ... and, often, in the dark.

It's just silly. Stupid, too. And insulting.

How do I really feel? Didn't like it.

So kill me.

EQUILIBRIUM - One and one half stars

(R: violence)

Starring: Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Angus MacFadyen, Sean Bean, William Fichtner.

Director: Kurt Wimmer.

Running time: 1 hr. 47 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Rip-off of several future-imperfect stories, with cheap- looking brutalist sets and cheesy ``Matrix''-style action.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Christian Bale intimidates Emily Watson in ``Equilibrium,'' a film about a dystopian future in which the autocracy enforces mandatory drug use to suppress citizens' emotions.