boy , what a great movie ! !
keanu reeves and morgan freeman acting together , the director of the fugitive ( andrew davis ) back again to give us another thriller , and the beautiful rachel stealing beauty weisz thrown in to boot .
how could this not be a blockbuster ?
all die - hard keanu reeves
fans , read on .
ol " much ado about nothing
" plays eddie kasalivich , a machinist studying at the university of chicago .
to help pay for the rent , he takes on this job making the machinery for a hydrogen project being conducted by the university .
by happy coincidence , he also happens to stumble on the solution to the final problem and thus is the only one who knows the key to performing this feat of miracle physics .
this project holds great promise : taking hydrogen from water and giving out more energy than is put in .
a potential solution to the earth 's energy problems without the pollution cost .
surely nobody could have any problems with that ?
morgan freeman is paul shannon , the project 's sponsor .
he works for a very powerful organization that disagrees with the paternal project leader as to how quickly technology should be released to the public .
he figures the world will disintegrate into anarchy if the results of the project are released too quickly .
so he murders the project leader , blows up the project ( great but short scene here , sort of like a mini id4 city - devastation thing ) and tries to simulate the experiment at some other hi - tech hush - hush location .
unfortunately , our intrepid machinist and an english physicist ( weisz ) manage to get away and now follows a fugitive - like chase using a not too dissimilar rehash of that movie script .
this movie is just dying for a comparison with " the fugitive " .
both movies use chicago as the main city and since the place does n't change much , i guess we ca n't really blame the setting for the paucity of atmosphere .
the trouble here is that where the fugitive had harrison ford and tommy lee jones , chain reaction only has keanu reeves and fred ward .
credit to them , but we are n't really given much of a chance to empathise with the characters .
where ford was able to work within the confines of the movie to evoke sympathy , eddie kasalivich
just doesn9
t seem very believeable and reeves ' character is never given the time to develop .
it might have been a better investment in film to give the characters more depth and spend less time on the chase sequences , which frankly , get quite boring after a while .
harrison ford was " the man against the world .
"
he was alone in a world where he did n't know who to trust and it came across real well .
in chain reaction , keanu reeves is n't alone .
now that would be fine if the fleeing couple had some chemistry and could really portray some paranoia , vulnerability and confusion .
we do n't get this .
we get him thinking he 's still in speed , only
now our sandra bullock has an english accent , probably does n't drive a bus , and hardly contributes anything to the movie .
the producers here probably thought , " hey , what if keanu and rachel do n't hit it off too well ?
let 's rope in that morgan to help us out .
"
well , keanu and rachel did n't hit it off well on the screen , and most unfortunately , morgan freeman does n't help much either .
the only thing we come to really know of paul shannon is that he always has a full load of cigars in his cigar holder .
it 's not really his fault .
once again , andrew davis just does n't take the time to build his characters .
someone must have convinced him that this time round , cinema dollars are best earned by making the movie run like a headless chicken .
the flying inkpot rating system :
* wait for the tv2 broadcast .
*
* a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
*
* * pretty good , bring a friend .
*
*
* * amazing , potent stuff .
*
*
*
* * perfection . see it twice .
Output: N