�I AM THE LAW� How cool was last night? What the fuck has happened to British Film over the last year or so? When did it grow such huge fucking balls? I�m still reeling from the double-whammy of Dog Soldiers and 28 Days Later when along comes Equilibrium to give my frontal lobes a damn good kicking. Where the flying fuck did this bastard come from and more importantly why did I never realise before that exploding crash helmets were so much fun? This is by far the best thing I�ve seen this year. It�s a genre slice of sci-fi of the best kind. Think The Matrix, 1984, Minority Report and Fahrenheit 451 all wrapped up in Logan�s Run. Its very British credentials are stamped in place from a great cameo from Sean Bean and a thankless role for Sean Pertwee but Christian Bale owns this movie. He was great in American Psycho and just managed to save Reign of Fire but in this he�s just incredible. Let�s get the plot out of the way. What�s left of humanity has turned its back on war by embracing an Orwellian society fuelled by fear and a Super-Prosac drugged population. Keeping law and order and burning all remnants of culture and quite a few people are The Cleric � a pseudo religious order trained in the art of breaking your fucking face while dodging bullets. Bale is at the top of his game but then doubts about what he is doing start to surface and we are treated to the old �one man bringing the system down� chestnut. This all sounds contrived but you have got to see this film. It�s beautiful. Criminals try to hang onto culture by collecting 20th century bric-a-brac and holding out in rooms that look like the stalls on �Bargain Hunt� and then in walk The Cleric and destroy everything. They do this by using a style of fighting I wittily dubbed gun-fu but I have since learned is called Gun-Kata � simple idea really � martial arts with the gun used as an extension of the hand. Stunning to watch. Every time Bale turns on his ex colleagues I found myself shouting �fuck yeah� as he flipped shotguns around into their owner�s faces and broke bones aplenty. Best bit is when he learns why people used to keep dogs as pets and then kills a truckload of soldiers who try to take away his puppy! You can see why I love this movie... With Dog Soldiers it was thumbs in eye sockets, with 28 Days Later it was zombies spitting blood and in this you get face slicing... go see it. And from the cinema to the Astoria. Anthrax was a nostalgia trip. Scott Ian still holds the whole thing together and seeing him throw out those riffs was like seeing an old friend again. Again I had forgotten how awesome a front man John Bush is. I have all these memories of seeing gangly spider monkey Joey belting out the songs but they soon get filed away when you see Bush rip the fuck out of something like �Madhouse�. He�s like a hobbit with attitude. Frank Bello still looks like Frankenstein�s monster and still whips up the crowd by mouthing �whathefuck� every time he thinks the pit is flagging. They ended the encore with �I Am The Law�, destroying the Astoria while I ripped my own throat apart. Beautiful. The real nostalgic part of the evening was having Jess drape her arms around my shoulders from behind. It just seemed so fucking right. Outside the crowd mixed with some nu-metal-punk gig that had just finished up at the Mean Fiddler. Funny. All these 14 year olds tripping over their baggy trousers and trying to keep their chests in their tops as they fall into the road away from all the ugly hairy old men. Be interesting to see if the band they saw is around even a year from now. Anthrax just chalked up twenty years doing this. Christ. Growing old gracefully is just not an option... thank fuck. Mike is blogging to: American III by Johnny Cash