CHAIN REACTION (1996) **1/2 Clancyesque thriller with a similar relationship to reality as that enjoyed by James Bond. They throw you off, at first, with the sweeping vistas of Georgetown mansions and government buildings, and time and place captions, but after twenty minutes or so the plot would have been more realistic if they just explained that Keanu Reeves had swallowed a spider potion that made him super-strong, and invisible whenever he wanted, and allowed him to tap into the collective subconscious, and enabled him to channel Einstein. Keanu is a personable actor, and I'm willing to follow him into genius land with an open mind, but there's nothing about him that's ever struck me as exhibiting the discipline that is suggested by dedication to the physical sciences. His sidekick Rachel Weisz, and there's no chemistry between them other than that they're always in the same frame, is credible enough in the frumpy discipline department, but steadfastly refuses to exhibit any signs of genius. So they're yin and yang, but once you get them together that's supposed to be the film. The premise is reasonable enough: dark powers within the government want to ensure the continuation of world addiction to fossil fuels, in order to avoid the economic shake-up that would inevitably follow the introduction of safer, cheaper energy (as if this hadn't already happened at least twenty years earlier). Morgan Freeman gets the good lines and speeches, and does an excellent job with some of them, but after awhile you're just not interested in anyone in this film pontificating about anything substantive. For all that, it's entertaining. Not suspenseful, not particularly provocative, not moving or endearing, but entertaining. It turns out that only the CIA is bad, the FBI is good. I wonder where the paper trail of funding for this film leads.
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