41 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
41 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
boy , what a great movie ! !
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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 .
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how could this not be a blockbuster ?
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all die-hard keanu reeves fans , read on .
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ol " much ado about nothing " plays eddie kasalivich , a machinist studying at the university of chicago .
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to help pay for the rent , he takes on this job making the machinery for a hydrogen project being conducted by the university .
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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 .
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this project holds great promise : taking hydrogen from water and giving out more energy than is put in .
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a potential solution to the earth's energy problems without the pollution cost .
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surely nobody could have any problems with that ?
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morgan freeman is paul shannon , the project's sponsor .
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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 .
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he figures the world will disintegrate into anarchy if the results of the project are released too quickly .
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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 .
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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 .
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this movie is just dying for a comparison with " the fugitive " .
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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 .
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the trouble here is that where the fugitive had harrison ford and tommy lee jones , chain reaction only has keanu reeves and fred ward .
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credit to them , but we aren't really given much of a chance to empathise with the characters .
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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 .
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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 .
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harrison ford was " the man against the world . "
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he was alone in a world where he didn't know who to trust and it came across real well .
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in chain reaction , keanu reeves isn't alone .
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now that would be fine if the fleeing couple had some chemistry and could really portray some paranoia , vulnerability and confusion .
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we don't get this .
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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 .
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the producers here probably thought , " hey , what if keanu and rachel don't hit it off too well ?
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let's rope in that morgan to help us out . "
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well , keanu and rachel didn't hit it off well on the screen , and most unfortunately , morgan freeman doesn't help much either .
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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 .
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it's not really his fault .
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once again , andrew davis just doesn't take the time to build his characters .
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someone must have convinced him that this time round , cinema dollars are best earned by making the movie run like a headless chicken .
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the flying inkpot rating system : * wait for the tv2 broadcast .
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* * a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
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* * * pretty good , bring a friend .
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* * * * amazing , potent stuff .
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* * * * * perfection .
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see it twice .
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