Chain Reaction

BUY

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1999	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	102:19 minutes	Other Extras	Featurette - The Making Of Chain Reaction
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (52:27)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Andrew Davis
Studio Distributor	Fox Home Entertainment	Starring	Keanu Reeves  Morgan Freeman Rachel Weisz Fred Ward Kevin Dunn Brian Cox
Case	Transparent Amaray
RRP	$39.95	Music	Jerry Goldsmith

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, in credits

    Conspiracy theorists rejoice - you have a conspiracy subplot or two running amuck here. The search for a cheap, clean, renewable energy source is a high priority for many, and Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu Reeves) and Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz) work on a University of Chicago team that is close to achieving the breakthrough that will see cheap energy produced from simple water. The project is backed by a foundation headed by the mysterious Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), but on the night of their greatest triumph things go horribly wrong. After celebrating the success of finally making the breakthrough to this wonderful new energy source, Eddie returns to the lab after seeing Lily home, only to find the head of the team, Alistair Barkley (Nicholas Rudall) dead, prime scientist Lu Chen (Tzi Ma) missing and a very large bomb about to explode. After the resultant explosion has destroyed about half of South Chicago, Eddie and Lily are well and truly implicated as the prime suspects for the explosion, in the absence of Lu Chen and some sound explanations. With the FBI chasing them and nowhere to turn, and with mysterious faxes turning up from China, Eddie and Lily head off in search of the truth. Of course, the truth is a very subjective thing, as they are about to find out, with doubts about who actually is doing what and for whom being flung around, left, right and centre. The FBI blames the CIA, Shannon clearly is working to a compromised agenda for whoever, and everything starts pointing to some connection with a technology firm in Leesburg, Virginia that by all accounts does not exist. The race is on for Eddie and Lily to clear their names whilst uncovering the truth for an increasingly dubious FBI.

    The intriguing thing is how real this could be. There certainly is a significant vested interest in not discovering sources of commercially viable cheap, clean, renewable energy, both politically and economically. The intrigue comes from how far government and big business would go to deny the world access to such energy sources. Hence the conspiracy theorists can rejoice. The story does a pretty good job in my view of setting out one likely scenario in such a game of intrigue. Keanu Reeves actually rises to the occasion here and is far less excruciating than normal - by his standards this is almost an Oscar winning performance. I guess it helps that really all he is required to do is be an ordinary Joe - even he cannot stuff that up too much. It might also have helped him by having the wonderful talent of Morgan Freeman around to feed off too. A wonderful actor who is incapable of a bad performance, and this is taken at a canter as far as he is concerned. Whilst Rachel Weisz is not the most logical choice for a physicist (although far better than Denise Richards - the mind boggles), she is quite decent in the role and is demonstrating an ability that given half an ounce of luck could see her emerge as a big name. Far worse than her have much bigger names. The rest of the cast chip in with decent enough performances to assist the fleshing out of this story. Actually reasonably well directed by Andrew Davis, better known for The Fugitive, this moves along at a decent pace and does not falter along the way. Throw in a few twists and some reasonable effects work, and you have all the right ingredients for a reasonably entertaining film.

    Actually better than I thought it was going to be, and quite a decent enough piece of entertainment.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced. The reference on the packaging to a 2.35:1 transfer is completely false.

    The partial restoration of the faith in Fox Home Entertainment comes from the fact that this is a much better transfer than that afforded Unlawful Entry. Whilst this is to be expected with a more recent film, it is nonetheless gratifying to see. This is in general quite a sharp transfer with some nice definition. Indeed, the definition at times is a little too good - the explosion in the old steel mill is just a tad too detailed and highlights just a little that it is a model that is going up in flames. However, in some of the laboratory scenes, this level of definition is great and it really helps make those scenes shine. The shadow detail is very good here and really helps the film enormously. It is a nice clear transfer with no hint of grain, nor any hint of any low level noise problems.

    Whilst this does not present a range of bright colours, the transfer certainly renders the greys and browns very well indeed, and they come up nicely vibrant. This gives the whole film a very natural, very believable feel without any hint of oversaturation. For a palette of quite muted colours, this at times displayed a quite exemplary presentation that really appeals to me.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG problems in the transfer. There did not appear to be any problems with film-to-video artefacts either, despite plenty of opportunities. And this is another very clean transfer from Fox Home Entertainment with barely a film artefact noted.

    This is an RSDL formatted disc with the layer change coming at 52:29. This is a decent layer change, although slightly oddly placed as it comes during a camera shot focused on Morgan Freeman. Nonetheless, it is only just noticeable and not really disruptive to the film at all. To be honest, I think that Fox Home Entertainment deserves some plaudits for the use of RSDL formatting on these relatively short films. Certainly it is resulting in plenty of space for compression of the data, which should only be beneficial to the quality of the transfer.

    And for the first time, the Hebrew subtitle option listed on the packaging actually exists!

Audio

    Dialogue was always clear and easy to understand.

    There were no audio sync problems with this disc.

    The score by Jerry Goldsmith is another of his sterling efforts that quite frankly is too good for the film! This certainly makes a great deal of contribution to the film and I enjoyed the closing credits music so much that I listened to it again without the video running. Been a long time since a piece of genuine film scoring had that effect on me, but maybe I am just weird.

    This is actually a quite nicely detailed soundtrack, with some decent enough, albeit a little understated, action out of the rear channels. I really wish though that sound engineers use the rear channels more effectively than they seem to. Nice to see the action there but how about getting some real action out of them? The overall soundscape is very natural, very well balanced and completely believable, if lacking just a little in conveying the cavern like nature of the two laboratory locations in the film. There is a decent enough amount of bass to keep the action pumping along, but the aforementioned explosion at the old steel mill could perhaps have benefited from just a tad more oomph.

Menu

Featurette - The Making of Chain Reaction (14:06)

    The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on;

• DTS 5.1 soundtrack

• Theatrical Trailer

• TV Spot

    The Region 1 version of this DVD misses out on;

• Making-Of Featurette

    A good video transfer

    A good audio transfer.

    An improved extras package that still could have been a lot better (why no theatrical trailer for instance?).

    But really, something has got to be done about the packaging errors: incorrect aspect ratios listed not once but twice, a theatrical trailer listed but not present, a featurette present but not listed and an audio track apparently listed incorrectly. These may be only little things Fox, but when you are asking over the top retail prices for back catalogue titles, I think it is reasonable to expect a greater degree of accuracy and legibility in the packaging.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris
6th February 2000