John Preston (character)
John Preston is a fictional character who appears in the 2002 film Equilibrium. Preston is portrayed by Christian Bale. In the film Preston holds the rank of "Grammaton Cleric First Class"; a rank to which Grammaton Cleric Brandt (Taye Diggs) aspires.(GODHAND)
In post World War III Earth the citizens of Libria, the last civilized stronghold left, are kept sedated by injections of Prozium, a sedative that all citizens take at various times during their day. Books, music, art...anything that causes an emotional reaction is deemed to be EC-10 (Emotional Content-10), forbidden material.
John Preston, whose intuitive ability to discern 'sense-offenders' (people who have halted their doses of Prozium and can feel emotions) gives him the ability to hunt them down, is a widower with two children who lives to serve the Tetragrammaton Council. His perfection of Gun Kata, and his lack of emotion make him the deadliest of enforcers. He is able to quell Resistance cells single-handedly.
His own wife was executed for being a 'sense-offender', a point that Preston's superior points out is ironic, given that Preston lived with her, but never sensed her crime.
His son, who on the surface seems the epitome of control and has the same cold demeanour as his father, is actually a 'sense-offender' too, as he and his sister halted their doses after the death of their mother. However, Preston never suspects that until his son tells him.
After a raid in the Nethers, where the 'sense-offenders' live and hide-out, Preston senses something in Partridge, then finds out he didn't turn in a book he confiscated at the raid.
Preston follows Partridge, shadowing him as he returns to a church in the Nethers. There he finds his partner reading the book and speaking to him about what they have lost as a result of the Prozium and the destruction of EC-10 materials.
He quotes William Butler Yeats, and then reaching for his gun, even though Preston warns him not to, forces Preston to kill him.
The death of his partner shakes Preston, and after he breaks his morning dose of Prozium, and then isn't able to replace it, he starts to feel again, and deliberately goes off of the medication.
In a raid with his new partner, Cleric Brandt, he tries to save some resistance fighters and he then saves a puppy. He puts the dog in his trunk and tries to release it that night, only to have it refuse to leave him. He puts it back in his trunk and gets caught by the police, who don't recognize him at first.
He ends up killing the whole squad single-handedly when they find the puppy and charge him with 'sense-offense'.
He also finds himself drawn to a prisoner from their raid, a woman named Mary, who turns out to be Partridge's lover. She finds out that he isn't dosing and puts him in contact with a resistance leader in the Nethers, who asks him to assassinate "Father", the figurehead leader of the Tetragrammaton.
When Mary is executed, the pain of her loss coupled with the reminder of his wife's execution that he stood by and watched breaks Preston and he begins to weep on the steps of the government building and is found by Brandt, who takes him to their superior as a traitor. Preston gains control and points out that the gun used to kill the squad in the Nethers is the gun Brandt is carrying, which he had switched earlier.
Their superior, Vice-Consul DuPont, pretends to arrest Brandt so that Preston can inadvertently lead them to the Resistance. When they set up a 'meeting' with Father for Preston, Brandt (who Preston had believed to be executed) comes out during a polygraph test that they tell Preston he must take before his audience and tells Preston it was all a trick and now he's going to be executed and Brandt will finally get his rank.
He leaves and Preston, shutting off all his emotions, attacks his guards and fights his way to DuPont's office, where he kills both Brandt, and DuPont.
He then destroys the computers that project 'Father's' message to Libria and then watches, as the Resistance attacks all the guards at the same time.
Kills
The character holds the record for second most onscreen kills seen in a single film by a single character, 118, according to moviebodycounts.com.[1]. The current holder of #1 is Ogami Ittō, of Lone Wolf and Cub, with 150, and the main character of the Blade movie franchise kills the most within his three films.
References
- ^ "Equilibrium Body Count" (HTML). Movie Body Counts. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
See also
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