The Keanu Reeves Project - Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction (1996) - Eddie Kasalivich

I need to do a little housekeeping before starting my latest review - 

In my last recap of “A Walk in the Clouds” I incorrectly stated that I hadn’t been giving out half points in

my scores which is why I settled on a score of 5.5.  Well after going back to some of my early entries in

this project, I was wrong, much like how I’m very frequently wrong.  I’ve given half points on numerous

occasions, so I’m going back and upping my score from a 5 to a 5.5.  This will all be VERY important

on the quiz I’ll be administering when I’m done here.

So I just watched “Chain Reaction,” a movie that could have been called something like “The Fugitive 2

- Cruise Control,” or I don’t know, “US Marshals.”

This movie so closely resembled the (much better) Harrison Ford movie “The Fugitive” that I had to do

some IMDB sleuthing to ensure that I wasn’t crazy, but I’ll get to this in a bit.

I didn’t see “Chain Reaction” when it was released in 1996 or ever until my viewing tonight.  When I

was in high school, I used to read movie reviews every Friday when they came out in the newspaper

(an actual real physical newspaper), even for movies I had no interest in seeing and I remember the

early reviews of it were really bad and I nearly immediately lost interest.  

A quick scouring of Rotten Tomatoes (where this only has 32 critics reviews, which I also find odd for a

major release like this was) will show pull-quotes like, “The film is dull and drags,” and “Plodding and

predictable, and a big disappointment.”

Here’s the thing - for all the flak it took in 1996, it’s really not that bad.  Please do not get me wrong,

“Chain Reaction” is far from a good movie, but it is also not “Johnny Mnemonic.” More than anything

else, it’s really just unnecessary and a direct knock-off of “The Fugitive,’ but with SCIENCE!

SCIENCE!

So a quick plot synopsis full of spoilers - 

Keanu Reeves plays Eddie, a machinist working in a field lab for the University of Chicago, where a

team of scientists, led by the eccentric Dr. Barkley, are trying to discover how to turn hydrogen into

energy.  Dr. Barkley is looking for a cheap, efficient energy source so he can...give it away?  Yes, so

he can give it away, even though his discovery would immediately become a trillion dollar enterprise. 

Dr. Barkley is a real iconoclast.  

This movie is very loose on the science here (which is great because it really barely matters in the long

run), but apparently the energy comes from shooting a laser at a specific frequency at a tank of liquid

hydrogen which then creates massive amounts of energy by heating the hydrogen to millions of kelvin

(which I believe is hotter than the fucking sun but again, whatever).  The problem though is that they

haven’t hit the right frequency level yet and if you shoot this tank with the wrong frequency it becomes

unstable and can explode.

The experiments are close but they are missing the right frequency in which to shoot the laser, and for

some reason Eddie (Keanu Reeves) is able to figure it out at home on his own testing setup.  Why he

has this, I don’t know.  I guess I don’t know what a machinist is or what they do in the context of a

scientific laboratory, particularly because Dr. Barkley has a team of physicists working under him on

this project, none of whom can figure it out.  

Anyway, Keanu Reeves figures it out and shows it off to the whole team at the lab where everyone

celebrates as they should because this is an absolutely groundbreaking discovery.  The whole gang is

at the celebration - Dr. Barkley, Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz as Lily (one of the physicists on the team)

and Tzi Ma as Dr. Lu Chen (who I recognized as the dad in “Rush Hour).”  Also there is Morgan Freeman

as Paul Shannon, who leads the foundation that funds this particular lab.

Dr. Barkley is also so thrilled with the discovery that he starts emailing everyone he knows about it instead

of, I don’t know, running to the patent office immediately and becoming the world’s first trillionaire.  Oh Dr.

Barkley, you cad.  

After a night of celebrating, Keanu returns to the lab to pick up his motorcycle (Keanu Reeves riding a

motorcycle - check!) only to discover the tanks have become unstable and on the verge of exploding,
Dr. Barkley is dead with a bag over his head, and Dr. Chen is missing.  This is no good.  Keanu escapes
and the lab explodes, taking eight city blocks of downtown Chicago with it.  Meanwhile Morgan Freeman
is writing an email to someone about the discovery and we see the words on his screen, “Possible global

implications.”  Oh, do you think so professor?  

Goodbye warehouse district

And here’s where this movie turns into a shittier version of “The Fugitive.”  Keanu and Lily get framed for the explosion, which must have killed hundreds or more people and when they see they’re being setup for it, make a run for it (I still don’t know where they think they were going) with the aid of Morgan Freeman.  

But, it turns out that Morgan Freeman is actually funded by the CIA through some program run by Brian

Cox, and the CIA was responsible for blowing up the lab. Once Keanu Reeves showed up and starting

blabbing to the FBI about seeing Barkley dead inside, the CIA then ended up being forced into framing

Keanu for it.  And much like the “science” in this movie you just have to say, “Okay, sure.”

Oh yeah, and the CIA has also apparently invested hundreds of millions of dollars into an underground

bunker to operate their own secret giant hydrogen energy facility that will only be useful if they get those

frequencies.

So while Eddie and Lily are on the run from the FBI as they are wanted terrorists, Morgan Freeman is

actually working against them and trying to help the CIA track them down because it turns out that Keanu

is the only guy that knows the right frequencies to make this thing work.  

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Sure, whatever.

The movie turns into a man on the run at this point, or more specifically, man and woman on the run.  It is

slowly revealed to us what the CIA is actually up to and eventually even the FBI agents hunting Keanu

and Lily figure out that they’re probably not guilty of anything other than being in a mediocre movie.

God I love both the email address and the attachment extension of '.all.'  Agent Leon Ford @FB.WashingtonDC.  The movie version of the internet in the 90's is truly hilarious.

Lily is eventually kidnapped by the CIA and taken to the underground facility where we discover shock of all shocks, Lu is alive but he doesn’t know the goddamn frequencies either and only Keanu can make this thing work.  Eventually, Keanu Reeves shows up, blows up the lab, and releases the frequencies to the world at large because he too doesn’t want to be a trillionaire.  Morgan Freeman kills Brian Cox, who has apparently lost his mind over the whole mess and the movie ends.  

The only three actors who WEREN'T also in "The Fugitive." 

Saying this movie is a knock-off of “The Fugitive” would be an understatement.   “The Fugitive” made almost $200 million dollars and was the second highest grossing movie of 1993 so sure, I can understand wanting to replicate that success.  So, how do make another movie as successful as “The Fugitive?”  Well, first you hire Andrew Davis, the same director, and then you apparently hire the entire cast to be in it as well.  

The casting of this movie is in some ways identical to the “Fugitive.”  I first noticed this on the appearance

of Neil Flynn, the janitor from “Scrubs,” who I had remembered played a transit cop in “The Fugitive,”

(because I always found that funny) who shows up as...a cop in “Chain Reaction.”  But it’s not just Neal

Flynn appearing in both movies.  No, according to IMDB, no less than TWENTY ACTORS appear in both

movies!  It’s been awhile since I’ve seen “The Fugitive,” so I didn’t notice many of them aside from Neal

Flynn.  The other one that stood out to me as well was one of the convicts on Harrison Ford’s prison bus

who plays a CIA goon in this one.

Neil Flynn as soon to be dead police officer in both movies

I mean, how do you cast TWENTY OF THE SAME ACTORS in a movie that is NOT a direct sequel?  It’s fucking crazy.  And it did not magically recreate the success of “The Fugitive.” 

Apparently, even Tommy Lee Jones himself was originally cast in the Brian Cox role before being

switched out for reasons I couldn’t find.   

Aside from that little bit of trivia, the movie’s lousy reputation is not as deserved as I think it is.  If say,

“The Fugitive” did not exist, this wouldn’t be that bad of a movie but of course, if “The Fugitive” didn’t exist,
I’m pretty certain that “Chain Reaction” never would have been made in the first place.  The plot is a little
silly, the twists are a little obvious and the science is completely absurd but also secondary to anything
else going on.  That said, I was never bored or checking the time to see how much was left before it ends,
like I’ve done with several other movies in this project.  We’re not forced into a budding romance between
Keanu and Rachel Weisz, the acting is fine and the action sequences are also fine for a movie from
1995 (but wow have we come a long way since then).  

A few spare thoughts: 

I guess I’ve got some logical fallacies that really bother me about this movie.  The reason the CIA
doesn’twant this new energy source available is because they think the destruction of the oil industry
will tank the stock market and crash the global economy, which may or may not be true.  But then,
why hire Barkley to run this thing?  They know he’s been very open in his willingness to giving this new
clean energy source away for free!  Like, hire someone else!  We see that Barkley isn’t even that
brilliant - an undergraduate (they even mention this about Keanu) machinist working in the lab is the
guy to figure it out!  And what about the CIA bunker?  I mean how secret can this thing actually be? 
There are literally hundreds of construction workers on this project.

This is the second movie that features Fred Ward in a prominent role, the first being the completely

forgettable waste of time, “The Prince of Pennsylvania.”  I hope Fred Ward and Keanu Reeves became

lifelong friends after being reunited here.  

A very young Michael Shannon is in this for about one minute as a flower delivery guy.  I love Michael

Shannon and was even thinking about doing a Michael Shannon filmography whenever I’m done with

the Keanu Reeves Project.  

Michael Shannon might actually have been stoned here.

More “Fugitive” stuff - instead of a dam, there’s a drawbridge.  Instead of going in disguise as a janitor at a hospital, Keanu goes in disguise as a construction worker at the CIA lab.  Instead of a one armed man, it’s...Brian Cox.  Okay, maybe that one doesn’t fit so well.  But it goes on and on and on.

Box Office information: $21 Million/$60 Million worldwide on a $55 Million budget ($43 Million inflation

adjusted).  The 85th highest grossing movie of 1996.  I had remembered this being a bigger bomb (no

pun intended) than it actually was.  I suppose the domestic returns really weren’t great but overall it

wasn’t a loser, although I’m sure that Hollywood accounting had it losing $9 Trillion.

Rotten Tomatoes: 16% Critics, 27% Audience.  Again, these rankings feel too low to me as the movie

really isn’t that bad.

IMDB: 5.7 - this feels closer to accurate.

My Movie Rating: 5.5/10.  I’m so glad I went back and saw that I was giving half point because this feels

better than a 5 but not that much better.  If I was drunk on a Saturday night flipping channels and this was

on, I could definitely see myself watching it for 15 or 20 minutes, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it

again.

Keanu Rating: 7/10.  Once again, Keanu is perfectly acceptable in this and does a totally fine job with

what he’s working with.

Up Next: Yet another movie I know nothing about, “Feeling Minnesota.”  This could be anything but based

on the cover art it looks like another romance.  Guess I’ll know soon!