1 hour 45 minutes, USA 1996
Director: Andrew Davis; Producers: Andrew Davis and Arne Schmidt; Screenplay: Arne Schmidt, Rick Seaman, Josh Friedman, J.F. Lawton and Michael Boatman; Photography: Frank Tidy; Production Design: Maher Ahmad; Editing: Arthur Schmidt, Dov Hoenig and Don Brochu; Music: Jerry Goldsmith.
Stars: Keanu Reeves (Eddie Kasalivich), Morgan Freeman (Paul Shannon), Rachel Weisz (Lily Sinclair), Fred Ward (Ford), Kevin Dunn (FBI Agent Doyle), Brian Cox (Lyman Earl Collier), Joanna Cassidy (Maggie), Chelcie Ross (Ed Rafferty), Nicholas Rudall (Alistair Barkley), Tzi Ma (Lu Chen)
Chain Reaction is a new action-thriller from director Andrew Davis, the brains behind such box office hits as Under Siege and The Fugitive. It stars Keanu Reeves as Dr. Eddie Kasalivich, one of a team of University scientists trying extract 'cheap, clean and abundant' energy from the hydrogen in water. One day, Eddie and his colleagues Dr. Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz), Dr. Alistair Barkley (Nicholas Rudall), and Dr. Lu Chen (Tzi Ma) succeed in their experiment, but that evening the laboratory is blown up, killing Barkley and Chen and destroying the experiment. Due to certain mitigating circumstances, Eddie and Lily are accused of the murders and suddenly find themselves on the run from the police, led by Inspector Ford (Fred Ward), trying to prove their innocence. Their only friend seems to be University department head Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), but Eddie and Lily soon find out that everything is not what it seems...
Chain Reaction is really nothing more than a poor man's The Fugitive, a rather disjointed and disappointing chase thriller which never quite recreates the boundless energy of the earlier effort. Their plotlines are remarkably similar: innocent man is framed for murder by 'the corporation' and spends the rest of the movie eluding the cops, led by a grizzled veteran, and solving the mystery. Keanu Reeves takes on the Harrison Ford role, and is passable as an action hero. He has put on a little weight here, presumably to make himself look more like a scientist than a beach bum, although this will no doubt disappoint his legions of female fans, but his acting is nowhere near the level he reached in Speed, and certainly below that of Ford. Fred Ward is the grizzled cop, played so memorably in The Fugitive by Tommy Lee Jones, but Ward doesn't have enough screen time to make the impression that Jones did before. Like Jones, Ward's character is 'just doing his job' and feels a certain sympathy for Reeves, whom he believes to be innocent. Ward is a versatile character actor, and always plays his parts well, but this film tends to relegate him to being just another faceless law enforcer with no real personality, except for a few barbed asides. Morgan Freeman, in his worst role for a while, plays the Jeroen Krabbe part of the corporate leader to whom there is more than meets the eye. However, Freeman's character is badly defined and is ultimately just another variation on the old 'corrupt boss' cliché. Freeman does what he can with the part, but in the end is let down by a lack of direction.
Chain Reaction does offer some very interesting ideas for the more thoughtful viewer to ponder: If such a discovery was to be made, what would the effect on the fossil fuel industry be, and how would it react? Should such information be kept from the public until the powers that be think it appropriate for them to be released, or does everybody have a right to know what is going on? For the first half hour, when these questions were being asked, I thought I was going to be in for a good second half. Sadly, though, director Davis drops these ideas and substitutes them for chases and fistfights, some of which are admittedly very good (especially the chase through Chicago concluding on a drawbridge, and the ice-boat chase of a frozen Wisconsin lake), but which come as something of an anti-climax after the promising beginning.
Technically the film is very accomplished, but one quibble I would have is with the awful editing. For example, Eddie and Lily would be running down a corridor, but a quick cut later they would be 200 yards away, running away from the building. I know it is only a minor point, but it happens a good dozen times throughout the movie, and Oscar nominated editors Don Brochu and Dov Hoenig et al should know better by now. The special effects are passable, but not brilliant by this summer's standards. And it is this factor that makes Chain Reaction the way it is. It is the lack of originality and overall mediocreness makes it only half the movie it could have been.
A film review by Jonathan Broxton 1996