Chain Reaction

Massive paranoia has long been a favorite American past time. Even the great American novel Moby Dick is thoroughly infused with enough cosmic fear and loathing to send some readers scurrying for the closet. But if the summer movies are any indication, then the great Yankee quest for the elusive white whale has taken on an obsessive, internalized dimension. In Mission: Impossible, The Rock, and Eraser, the enemies are all home grown as the country seemingly shifts its focus away from perceived foreign menace. Now the guns are being trained on the jerks who live next door.

Chain Reaction is the latest reminder that we have met the enemy and he is us. Of course, for those who are old enough to remember the Vietnam years, this observation is hardly unique. But even a graying hippie would have to be a little startled by the degree to which this motto has now become an institutionalized norm.

Not that Chain Reaction isn't potentially loaded with some interesting references to a few of the dirty secrets of modern American history. The movie plays as a revisionist overview of the Manhattan Project, stripped of the short sighted jingoism of the World War Two era. The central gizmo in Chain Reaction is a process that can remove all the hydrogen from simple water and turn it into pure energy. But the idealistic scientists working on the project have no concept as to the nasty devils from the military/industrial complex who employs them.

At the eve of their successful completion of the project, the Chicago-based laboratory explodes in an neo-atomic fireball (the other hot thing this summer, e.g. Independence Day). One of the few survivors is Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu Reeves), a machinist who also just happens to be a physics school drop-out. Well, actually, he was asked to leave school after he blew up a building (for reasons never explained in the movie). Not surprisingly, Kasalivich is quickly promoted to the top of the FBI's most wanted list.

Equally suspected is Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz), a physicist who wasn't at the lab due to a major hang-over. The FBI becomes convinced that she was the brain behind Kasalivich's brawn's. This means that Lily and Eddie now have more in common with each other than most couples as they proceed to go on the lam together.

They are both young, attractive, and very sincere in their convictions. They also share an unfortunate faith in their project director, Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman). This is not that significant tipping of a plot point. After all, most academic administers don't travel to expensive Chicago restaurants in limos and maintain lavish estates in Georgetown. Ah oh! Do you think he might work for something known in intelligence lingo as The Company?

Of course, the plot of Chain Reaction quickly begins to resemble The Fugitive (on the run, but with a date this time). The resemblance is enhanced by the fact that director Andrew Davis created both films. But the deja vu quality of Chain Reaction is not the movie's real problem. Its real problem is ham-fisted message-making coupled with too many silly action scenes.

Technically, Chain Reaction could have been an incredible action movie with a sly political context. But the action is unloaded in a hyper-fast manner that eventually grows tiresome and absurd. Likewise, the social message is finally delivered in a quick set of broad statements that sounds like a lecture from a school child. At times, Chain Reaction is extremely engaging. But all too often, the movie plays like the world's longest coming attraction trailer. It's all highlights, minus any scenes that might make the viewer give a hoot about the characters (in this regard, it makes The Rock look like a character study).

Which is too bad, since the movie contains some fine work by both Freeman and Brian Cox as his Company connection. Likewise, Reeves has interesting possibilities as a hi-tech primitive who exists by quirky instincts, has a nearly supernatural command of computers, and is supremely capable of clubbing an assassin with the forearm of a real Neanderthal. Reeves might yet prove to be the definitive action hero of the Nineties.

But he better check the script next time. Chain Reaction never explodes beyond the special effects (which are very well done). Even Speed II might be an improvement.