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Three years prior to Chain Reaction, director Andrew Davis had apparently opened the door to a stellar film career with
that year's smash hit The Fugative. It was snappy, dark, intelligent and maintained a tension rarely reached in cinema. Surely
having wowed audiences the world over Davis could pick up the phone book and get anyone he wanted, right? Well, you would
have thought so but when the convoluted and bemusing Steal Big, Steal Little came along as his first post Fugative production,
the great Hollywood Leveller seemed to have a new victim. Luckily for him, he was given another chance, and Chain Reaction
was the result. With an estimated $55 million budget and some A class talent in the shape of Morgan Freeman and Brian
Cox supporting Keanu Reeves and a young Rachel Weisz, studio executives must have been fairly confident. Couple that
with Davis directing what essentially amounts to a chase movie having excelled with The Fugative, Chain Reaction looked
a sure fire box office smash in the making.
Reeves plays Eddie Kasalivich, an undergraduate technician working in the labs of the University of Chicago. The
team of this lab have been working tirelessly for many years hoping to find a solution to the Earth's power needs and
the polution caused by traditional energy production. The team is led by Dr. Barkley, a brilliant scientist and
an idealist interested in giving the world free energy. Suddenly the team make an incredible discovery that will change the
entire planet forever; clean limitless energy created by splitting hydrogen and oxygen molecules in good old fashioned
water. A process so simple yet brilliant, the Earth's critical energy shortages could be wiped out within a year. The
scientists have themselves a huge shindig in celebration of their achievments, but all is not what it seems as their
be a traitor amongst them. The entire lab goes bang bang quite spectacularly and Kasalivich and Dr. Lily Sinclair
(Weisz) are forced on the run wanted for the murder of one of the leading scientists and the theft of the formula for clean
energy. There is a conspiracy here, one that as usual could go all the way to the top, and Morgan Freeman is excellent lapping
up the opportunity to have fun in a cartoonish sinister role as Paul Shannon, a man with vested interest in maintaining
the status quo.
Here is where Davis should have really come into his own. He has a conspiracy and two good looking actors on the
run from the FBI in the form of Agent Leon Ford (Ward). I'm watching The Fugative 2, surely. The real snap in The Fugative
came from its terrific set pieces and the gripping nature of the chase and he doesn't totally disappoint here with one pursuit
across a frozen lake particulaly good.
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| Fallout? What fallout?? |
From here things get sadly predictable and it becomes a little tiresome. Weisz, who seems to be here purely to add a
bit of sex to proceedings, inevitably gets herself captured and used to lure Reeves into attempting a rescue. Blah Blah Blah.
It's nothing new and it isn't handled in a way that makes it any more exciting than the trillion other times the same
plot device has been used. We do though have the sight of Keanu avoiding a nuclear blast by doing a big jump on his motorbike!
Oh, yeah, things are descending pretty quickly into bad sci fi here!
Overall the film isn't a disaster. Reeves is a capable fellow when he is given good direction and I think
he is pretty good here. Weisz is beautiful, and, er, thats basically what she was paid for so you can't attack her really.
What I certainly can take issue with though is the feeling that any viewer with half an ounce of sense can second guess
the film from the outset. When it is so obvious that Reeves and Weisz are going to end up victorious it falls upon the script
writers to keep an audience really interested and not slip into generic plot develpoment. Sadly Chain Reaction includes
most of the cliches one would expect to find in films that essentially lack ambition. Davis has Under Seige
and Above the Law on his CV and I would have thought that after The Fugative he would have wanted to get away from such fill
in the blanks type films (personally I adore Steven Seagal but thats irrelevant). Unfortunatley, this film is a career
regression not progression for him.
Chain Reaction is really a mish mash of hundreds of other films and doesn't come close to the class of The Fugative.
It leaves the lingering feeling that with a bit more effort, it could have really been a contender.
It gets an icepirateship 2/5
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