Chain Reaction (Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B+     Extras: C-     Film: C-

 

 

After major critical and commercial success with his revival of The Fugitive (reviewed on HD-DVD elsewhere on this site), Andrew Davis could not buy another hit.  After that very sappy hot air balloon melodrama Steal Big, Steal Little, he has constantly returned to the thriller genre with no luck (The Guardian is the latest mistake) and the 1996 Keanu Reeves spectacle Chain Reaction was the first of the many lame attempts.  Reeves and Rachel Weisz are scientists who may know too much about secret government weapons experiments and so much that they may be expendable.

 

Enter Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman) as a Deep Throat-type of government character.  He is in the know about certain things and contacts them as they are on the verge of a new weapons breakthrough.  Brian Cox, Joanna Cassidy, Fred Ward and Kevin Dunn are among the others they are not sure they can trust.  When things start to go wrong, they land up on the run and need to think quickly to figure out who is for them and who is against them.

 

Unfortunately, this is one of those silly action films (more silly now thanks to the realities of 9/11) where they can outrun the expanse of explosions and use shallow wit to survive.  A comparison to the Jason Bourne series in particular shows how bad the screenplay (which somehow took at least five people to write!?!) is and the resulting film is just so bad.  Yes, Reeves action and comedy films can often get away with celebrating stupidity, but the abundance of it here in unintentionally bad and totally un-amusing forms is just too much and sink the film.

 

The result is another wasted cast of good actors in a long 106 minutes that seem like an even longer waste of time.  The film did not do well at the box office and few talk about it anymore, unless it is to say how bad it is.  Fox was better off getting this dud out early on Blu-ray while it still has curio interest.

 

The 1080p digital MPEG-2 @ 19 MBPS High Definition image was shot by cinematographer Frank Tidy, B.S.C., who began his career lensing distinctive-looking films like Ridley Scott’s The Duelists (1977) and the 1983 cult favorite Spacehunter before falling into a bad pattern of commercial work with little character.  This film sadly continues that run, with too much digital work and too little imagination in making memorable shots.  He and Davis shot Under Siege (also reviewed on HD-DVD elsewhere on this site) and even that had a little more character than this.  There are detail limits in addition to the digital work and this is likely an older HD transfer.  The film was a sound demo favorite in its time briefly and the DTS HD Master Audio lossless 192kHz/24-bit 5.1 mix sounds better than it ever could before, sporting a score by the late, great Jerry Goldsmith that audiophiles, Goldsmith and movie soundtrack fans may find interesting enough to want to own this version for.

 

However, despite some good sound effects, neither they nor the music can save the film.  Except for the original theatrical trailer and a trivia track, this disc is surprisingly empty of extras, even for a 25GB disc.  Only diehard fans of the stars or score should ultimately apply.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo