Big-budget action movies are usually meant to blast you out of your seat, dazzle you senseless with state-of-the-art carnage and destruction. But you need something between the blasts, too: “breathers” or rest moments to warm up to the characters. That may be the biggest hole in “Chain Reaction,” director Andrew Davis’ technically smashing but otherwise disappointing return to the action genre — and Chicago — after his 1993 doc-on-the-run blockbuster, “The Fugitive.
“Chain Reaction” — which stars Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz and Morgan Freeman as Chicago science researchers and administrators caught up in intrigue and murder — is a thriller about the energy crisis, made by highly talented people with huge resources.
Yet it’s divided against itself. Part of the film is a paranoid suspense movie about impervious government corruption. Part of it is a sci-fi drama with a message about the ecological crisis. Part of it is love on the run in the wintry Midwest. And part of it is “The Fugitive” all over again, in a lesser key.
Reeves, capitalizing on his new “Speed” image as a fast-moving hero, plays genius Eddie Kasalivich, a University of Chicago student and machinist. Weisz plays comely physicist Dr. Lily Sinclair, and Freeman is their dapper foundation-head boss, Paul Shannon.
All three are part of an epochal experiment to find a new clean power source, extracting hydrogen energy from water. When the experiment goes awry — and a mysterious assassination team moves in to kill head researcher Dr. Alistair Barkley and blow up the lab — Eddie and Lily find themselves on the list of suspects and go on the run, with Shannon trying to catch up to them.
Two hard-boiled FBI agents (Fred Ward as Ford and Kevin Dunn as Doyle), are after them, too — along with the police, the news media and apparently the CIA.
Yet, even though Eddie and Lily are academic types with scant action-hero experience, they quickly prove adept at running like mad, bashing heads, kicking butt, trading gunfire, bluffing crooks and steering ice boats across Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva while being pursued by killers in a helicopter.
Eddie is such a long-haired, blue-jean dynamo, maybe the scientists should be tapping his energy. He does everything from hopping off the rising Michigan Avenue Bridge in icy weather while being chased by a dozen cops to penetrating America’s most top-secret laboratory by simply putting on a hard hat.
Meanwhile, as we follow Shannon’s strange maneuvers, we learn that the U.S. government is apparently divided, with different sections working in ignorance of each other, even against each other.
“Chain Reaction,” is a big-time Hollywood heavy industrial thriller that tries to go against the action-movie grain. Davis, true to form, tries to attack many of the assumptions of the usual ultra-violent, thick-headed Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sly Stallone slam-banger.
As the cars crash, buildings blow up and good and bad guys die harder and harder, Davis and co-producer-story writer Arne L. Schmidt also try to slip us a pill: a heart-stirring message about how our planet is galloping toward ecological ruin while visionaries who might save us are caught in the vise of state and corporate greed and villainy.
Even though it blows up in our faces, it’s tempting to describe the movie as a noble experiment. I’d like to say it was. But, in many ways, it isn’t. With a theme like the possible destruction and resurrection of the planet, the movie doesn’t need chase scenes to excite us.
There are shots in “Chain Reaction” — withering aerial views of the wasteland of the old steel mills — that suggest what it could have been if the J.F. Lawton-Michael Bortman script had been fleshed out with ideas rather than following the numbers.
Davis is a filmmaker whose talent lies in creating whole worlds and communities around his galvanizing action scenes. “The Fugitive” was a movie bursting with life. And so were “Code of Silence,” “Under Siege” and his much-maligned “Steal Big, Steal Little.”
But “Chain Reaction,” for all its flash and fireworks, has a perfunctory feel. The buildings may catch fire, but the actors don’t. There’s nothing like those blazing Tommy Lee Jones “Big Dog” scenes from “The Fugitive.”
Maybe that’s because Davis is a director who relies heavily on improvisation and participation by his actors. It’s probably wrong to say that the difference between “Chain Reaction” and Davis’ previous hits is that the earlier films had better scripts. Actually, “The Fugitive” and “Under Siege” were largely reworked on the set, with Jones rewriting many of his own lines.
Here, Reeves is likable but somewhat blank. So, in a way, is Rachel Weisz. And, since they barely talk to each other, they can never really connect to each other — or us. Ward and Dunn play typical Andy Davis cops: savvy, tough, unflappable. Nicholas Rudall is appropriately fervent as Dr. Barkley. And Brian Cox — from Ken Loach’s “Hidden Agenda” — is a florid, seething heavy.
But there’s only one really successful performance in “Chain Reaction”: Morgan Freeman’s Paul Shannon. Natty and self-contained, his eyes owlishly taking in everything, Shannon is the epitome of the ambivalent company man, his image so icily well-crafted, you can never quite pierce behind it. In a movie with few surprises, Freeman keeps you guessing in nearly every scene, suggesting a puzzling, deep, even dangerous personality.
The movie has the crackle and scintillation of the usual top-level big-studio thriller: beautiful sets (by former Chicago Victory Gardens Theater designer Maher Ahmad), rich photography and locations, and exciting blowups.
I was happy to see my tiny hometown, Williams Bay, Wis., and Yerkes Observatory make it, at last, into a major movie. (I also was gratified to learn that, at least in movie fantasyland, Eddie and Lily could get there by railroad, since a train hasn’t stopped there in decades.)
But the backgrounds often feel like stops on a tour — as when Eddie travels between the Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum in one shot, breaks a display case and bops a pursuer with a bone.
The movie often has a hasty, forced feel; it lacks the vigor and human detail of Davis’ best action movies.
There’s a perfunctory quality — as if it were shot before the script was quite ready, rushed too hard, edited too fast. (Maybe it was. When the production wrapped last April and I learned that the movie was due out in summer, my jaw dropped.)
Big action movies like “Chain Reaction” can become a world unto themselves, with their own rules, language and communities. Maybe even their own economy. And sometimes those very rules can work against a movie — such as the punishing editing schedule foisted on this one just to make the summer blockbuster season.
As it is, “Chain” begins and ends with a bang, and, in between, moves too fast for any whimpers. Unfortunately, it’s all wasted energy.
”CHAIN REACTION”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Andrew Davis; written by J.F. Lawton, Michael Bortman; photographed by Frank Tidy; edited by Don Brochu, Dov Hoenig, Arthur Schmidt; production designed by Maher Ahmad; music by Jerry Goldsmith; produced by Arne L. Schmidt, Davis. A 20th Century Fox release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:46. MPAA rating: PG-13.
THE CAST
Eddie Kasalivich …………… Keanu Reeves
Paul Shannon ………………. Morgan Freeman
Dr. Lily Sinclair ………….. Rachel Weisz
FBI Agent Leon Ford ………… Fred Ward
FBI Agent Doyle ……………. Kevin Dunn
Lyman Earl Collier …………. Brian Cox
