Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Chain Reaction Blu-ray Movie Review

One Step Forward, One Step Back?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 30, 2011

As we pause occasionally to fill gaps in the review base, it's interesting to consider how Blu-ray has progressed over its short lifespan. Chain Reaction was one of Fox's earliest releases, and it reflects many of the limitations typical of the format's beginning: MPEG-2 compression, a BD-25 and almost no special features. Then again, the disc loads quickly, doesn't churn over the latest copy protection scheme, never tries to check the internet for updates, and displays a simple menu that's easy and intuitive to navigate. If the disc were issued today, the image would certainly be superior, and it might include additional features. But would it be so user-friendly?

Issues of historical perspective also affect one's experience of the film. Chain Reaction united two veterans of unconventional and hugely successful chase movies: director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) and star Keanu Reeves (Speed). The film uses the familiar device of a man wrongly accused and trying to prove his innocence while evading the authorities, but it overlays that narrative with a paranoid scenario straight out of Seventies thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor. Here, it's all about a scientific breakthrough that will make fossil fuels obsolete, and a shadowy conspiracy -- maybe government, maybe corporate, maybe both -- that wants to control it. Today it's almost comical to hear one character warn that the abrupt release of such technology would trigger stock market collapses, recession and massive unemployment, since we managed to achieve those things without the benefits of clean, cheap energy. But it just goes to show that no one really knows the future.

Eddie Kasalivich (Reeves) is a student engineer in Chicago working for Dr. Alistair Barkley (Nicholas Rudall), a visionary who believes that the world's future depends on deriving energy from the hydrogen that's an essential component of water. Alistair is also an idealist who believes that the technology, once created, should be freely available to the world. This goal isn't shared by the source of his funding, a secretive foundation headed by Dr. Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), but their disagreement remains theoretical until something actually works. Shannon, who spent three years at DARPA and routinely reports to a classified Senate intelligence committee, appreciates that breakthroughs take time. His focus is on winning the long-term war for industrial and technological superiority. (And this, more than any other aspect of the film, lets us know we're in fantasyland.)

Believing that Alistair is near something big, Shannon comes to wintry Chicago to visit the huge lab his foundation has paid for, where Alistair works with a multi-national team that includes Eddie, Dr. Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz) and Lu Chen (Tzi Ma). They all watch as Eddie's latest mechanical design proves to be the key to making their system work. Congratulations and drinks all around.

That evening, however, a mysterious van filled with menacing figures pulls up to the lab. Only Alistair and Lu Chen are there, but Eddie returns to retrieve his motorcycle just as the van is leaving. He finds Alistair dead and their system set on overload by someone who obviously knew how. Eddie narrowly escapes on his bike just ahead of a massive hydrogen explosion that engulfs several city blocks. (It's a spectacular and loud event.)

A massive police investigation ensues, quickly joined by an FBI task forced headed by Agents Ford and Doyle (Fred Ward and Kevin Dunn). Planted evidence points toward Eddie and Lily, who take off after Shannon cooly counsels them to turn themselves in and rely on the legal representation he'll supply them. For the film's next hour, Eddie and Lilly are chased by both law enforcement and the same mystery men who detonated their lab. The leash of these attack dogs is held by an equally mysterious figure, Lyman Collier, played by Brian Cox with the same menacing gusto he would later bring to the first two Bourne films. The chase proceeds in and around a raised drawbridge, across an observatory rooftop, over a frozen lake, through a deserted summer home that's been closed down for the winter, all around a "science museum" that's supposed to be in Washington, D.C., but looks suspiciously like several Chicago-area museums I used to visit when I was a kid (the scenes were shot there) and finally into a massive underground complex in Virginia, where Lyman Collier oversees a clearly nefarious operation.

Davis is an old school action director, in the sense that he never relies on quick cutting to create tension. His sequences work by showing you where people are in relation to each other and the physical space they all inhabit, an approach that is fast becoming a dying art. It's an approach that also requires a certain kind of actor, one who understand how to use physical action to express character. That's why Harrison Ford and Davis were such a good match in The Fugitive and why Davis worked so well with Steven Segal in his younger, thinner, more agile days (Under Siege and Above the Law). With his prior roles in Speed and Point Break, Keanu Reeves fits right in with this lineage, and the role of Eddie calls less for nuanced line readings than for expressive running, jumping and dodging. The same goes for Rachel Weisz's performance as Lily, with the added dimension that she's supposed to feel the winter cold more than Eddie. (Apparently, this required no acting, given the frigid temperatures of the Chicago winter in which the production filmed.)

But it's Morgan Freeman's Shannon who dominates the film, and not just because Freeman is such a commanding presence. Shannon is the ambiguity at the heart of the story. He's always helping Eddie, and he's smart, polished and sophisticated. If it weren't for the faint odor of sulfur that trails him wherever he goes (and the ever-present cigar), he could be a younger version of Freeman's Lucius Fox in the latest Batman franchise. But Shannon is a bad guy in ways that remain enigmatic right up to the end of Chain Reaction, and Freeman is wonderful at playing evil. It was a villain's role that initially brought him wide recognition and his first Oscar nomination as the pimp Fast Black in Street Smart. As Freeman explained in an interview, he got the part because every other actor who tried out played the audition scene yelling and screaming, whereas Freeman calmly backed one of the producers against the wall while he quietly delivered the speech asking her to decide which of her two eyes he should cut out. The same confident tone of menace emanates from Shannon. He just dresses better and runs with a more respectable crowd.

Chain Reaction Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Contrary to the disc jacket, the aspect ratio is 1.85:1, which was the original AR, not 2.35:1.

Fox was still using MPEG-2 compression in the early days of Blu-ray, and the 1080p Blu-ray of Chain Reaction shows its limitations. While the image is an obvious improvement over the DVD, it isn't nearly as clean or as clear as later Blu-ray images created with advanced codecs like the AVC that is now standard on Fox discs. Video noise is present throughout the frame (some viewers might mistake it for "grain", but it isn't), and while it rarely becomes so intrusive that it interferes with viewing enjoyment, it does prevent the Blu-ray from retaining all the fine detail in backgrounds, especially in wide shots, of which the format is capable. Occasionally there is visible aliasing or other artifacts that might or might not appear with a superior compression scheme; one must also bear in mind that the transfer is also at least five years old (and probably more).

Black levels are very good, which results in good detail, when it isn't being interfered with by noise. This is particularly noteworthy in details of hair, clothing, furniture and lab equipment, especially in close and medium shots. (Shannon's luxurious wardrobe deserves extra appreciation.) The colors captured by cinematographer Frank Tidy (a regular collaborator of Davis) are represented in all their variation, although the palette heavily emphasizes blues, grays and greens, consistent with both the nature of the scientific work and the unceasing chill, both real (it's winter outside) and figurative (it's a cold, cruel world, as Shannon keeps warning everyone).

Other than the MPEG-2 artifacts, I didn't see anything to indicate compression problems or inappropriate digital tampering. With few special features and a limited number of audio tracks, this 106-minute feature fits on a BD-25 adequately.

Chain Reaction Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The original 5.1 mix is presented in DTS lossless, and it's very effective. When the team first powers up their experiment, you'll hear (and feel) the surge all around you. When the lab blows, your subwoofer had better be up to the task, or it'll bottom out. (Mine did, because I live in an apartment, and I can't accommodate a giant box.) Numerous sounds appropriate to the film's various environments occur in the surrounds; and in the final sequences set in an expansive underground facility that would have been suitable for a Bond film, there's almost always something interesting happening in the surrounds. This is a lively but not overcooked or bombastic mix that tries to keep one foot planted in some sort of realism (which is how Davis makes his films). Dialogue remains intelligible throughout, and Jerry Goldsmith's score, which at times echoes the score he wrote for Executive Decision the same year, is nicely reproduced and effectively folded into the mix.

Chain Reaction Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The DVD released in 2001 had two TV spots that are not included here, and it also featured a different selection of trailers for other Fox features. It did not include the "trivia track" listed below, which, as far as I know, is exclusive to the Blu-ray.

• Trivia Track: When activated, this feature provides a steady stream of on-screen information throughout the film. I am not a fan of such features, because they obscure part of the images substantially more than occurs with subtitles, due to the graphics that typically accompany the "pop-up" format. Relatively little of the information on this track relates to the movie. Most of it describes real-world background on issues touched upon in the story, such as fossil fuels, alternative energy and the function of the CIA (which gets much more complimentary treatment than some may feel it deserves post-9/11).



• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2.35:1; 1:48): An effective and energetic promotion.



• Fox Flix (HD): Trailers are included for: Alien vs. Predator, Broken Arrow, Commando (which is in pretty rough shape) and the Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes.

Chain Reaction Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a thriller, Chain Reaction holds up well, largely because so many directors working today don't have Davis' craftsmanship when it comes to setting up a scene and steering an audience through it. (The essence of suspense, as Hitchcock taught, is knowing what's going on.) As a comment on geopolitical events, the film falls under the heading of the famous line from Hemingway, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" It would be wonderful if someone discovered a clean, cheap source of readily available energy. It would be even more wonderful if that someone chose to release it free to the world instead of profiting handsomely from it. And it would be truly awe-inspiring if we had one or more government agencies that were so efficiently and effectively run that they actually knew what was happening in the world before it happened.

Given its technical limitations, I can't wholeheartedly recommend the Blu-ray of Chain Reaction (unless you can find it used or very cheap). Hopefully Fox will revisit it -- keeping the clean, simple menu and leaving off the BD-Java, BD-Live and endless ads and forced trailers. Pretty please?