It took me a long time to eventually get around to seeing Chain Reaction on video. I missed it at the cinemas and then, unlike almost 99% of the English speaking world, I was rather unimpressed with star Keanu Reeves' mega-hit, The Matrix. Eventually however, armed with my respect for Morgan Freeman as an actor and liking for a bit of suspense and action, I rented the movie from my local video store.

Chain Reaction casts Reeves as a young student scientist who is working on an amazing renewable fuel source, with a team of other scientists lead by a starry eyed idealist of a professor. When it becomes apparent that their experiments to extract the power of the hydrogen content of water for practical uses are succeeding, a bunch of bad-dudes blow up the lab, murder the kindly old professor and send Keanu and his fellow scientist (Rachel Weisz) running from the feds as the victims of an elaborate frame-job.

From here on in, Chain Reaction strongly resembles director Andrew Davis' other film, The Fugitive, complete with numerous police chases, a cover-up, the friend you turn to for help who turns out to actually be your enemy (Oh how many times have we seen that one?) and of course, the gradual turning of the tables where the law starts to believe they might not have actually done it.

Morgan Freeman, who usually eats up his roles with gusto, has unfortunately been served up a double helping of steamed haggis in this role and he could not look more ludicrous as the mysterious, cigar puckering secret something operative if you dressed him up as Krusty the Clown. Freeman's character is nonsensical, confusing and despite the fact that he is made out to be a rather intelligent individual in the film, comes over looking like an acute schizophrenic due to the bizarre nature of the script and the plot of the movie.

Without revealing too much about the film, Freeman is involved with some sort of covert government agency - a sort of black ops of science group who are paid to ensure that technology is released in acceptable portions while the authorities look the other way. The reasons given for the existence of this group (which are apparently supposed to get us all nodding our heads and saying "Ohhhhhhh!") make absolutely no sense whatsoever, making the whole movie very hard to swallow and rather tedious and anticlimactic as a result.

Reeves and Weisz perform credibly and make an enjoyable duo and some of the action scenes and special effects are well done, but at the end of the day, a couple of enjoyable stars and some decent action scenes cannot perch comfortably on such a flimsy foundation. There is some entertainment here, but that is derived entirely from the action element, which cannot hide the basic lameness of the entire movie. I could only recommend Chain Reaction to die hard Reeves fans and would suggest Morgan Freeman groupies to avoid this one like the plague.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older