boy , what a great movie ! ! 
keanu reeves and morgan freeman acting together , the director of the fugitive ( andrew davis ) back again to give us another thriller , and the beautiful rachel stealing beauty weisz thrown in to boot . 
how could this not be a blockbuster ? 
all die-hard keanu reeves fans , read on . 
ol " much ado about nothing " plays eddie kasalivich , a machinist studying at the university of chicago . 
to help pay for the rent , he takes on this job making the machinery for a hydrogen project being conducted by the university . 
by happy coincidence , he also happens to stumble on the solution to the final problem and thus is the only one who knows the key to performing this feat of miracle physics . 
this project holds great promise : taking hydrogen from water and giving out more energy than is put in . 
a potential solution to the earth's energy problems without the pollution cost . 
surely nobody could have any problems with that ? 
morgan freeman is paul shannon , the project's sponsor . 
he works for a very powerful organization that disagrees with the paternal project leader as to how quickly technology should be released to the public . 
he figures the world will disintegrate into anarchy if the results of the project are released too quickly . 
so he murders the project leader , blows up the project ( great but short scene here , sort of like a mini id4 city-devastation thing ) and tries to simulate the experiment at some other hi-tech hush-hush location . 
unfortunately , our intrepid machinist and an english physicist ( weisz ) manage to get away and now follows a fugitive-like chase using a not too dissimilar rehash of that movie script . 
this movie is just dying for a comparison with " the fugitive " . 
both movies use chicago as the main city and since the place doesn't change much , i guess we can't really blame the setting for the paucity of atmosphere . 
the trouble here is that where the fugitive had harrison ford and tommy lee jones , chain reaction only has keanu reeves and fred ward . 
credit to them , but we aren't really given much of a chance to empathise with the characters . 
where ford was able to work within the confines of the movie to evoke sympathy , eddie kasalivich just doesn9t seem very believeable and reeves' character is never given the time to develop . 
it might have been a better investment in film to give the characters more depth and spend less time on the chase sequences , which frankly , get quite boring after a while . 
harrison ford was " the man against the world . " 
he was alone in a world where he didn't know who to trust and it came across real well . 
in chain reaction , keanu reeves isn't alone . 
now that would be fine if the fleeing couple had some chemistry and could really portray some paranoia , vulnerability and confusion . 
we don't get this . 
we get him thinking he's still in speed , only now our sandra bullock has an english accent , probably doesn't drive a bus , and hardly contributes anything to the movie . 
the producers here probably thought , " hey , what if keanu and rachel don't hit it off too well ? 
let's rope in that morgan to help us out . " 
well , keanu and rachel didn't hit it off well on the screen , and most unfortunately , morgan freeman doesn't help much either . 
the only thing we come to really know of paul shannon is that he always has a full load of cigars in his cigar holder . 
it's not really his fault . 
once again , andrew davis just doesn't take the time to build his characters . 
someone must have convinced him that this time round , cinema dollars are best earned by making the movie run like a headless chicken . 
the flying inkpot rating system : * wait for the tv2 broadcast . 
 * * a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha ! 
 * * * pretty good , bring a friend . 
 * * * * amazing , potent stuff . 
 * * * * * perfection . 
see it twice . 
