Thank You Andrew Davis

A few months ago over dinner with friends, I said that when I was younger, I wanted to be a film critic. My friend Jeff (who is a writer and blogger himself) fired off a tersely worded, yet completely truthful response:

“Being a critic is the easiest job in the world.”

While that statement was completely agreeable to me, it made me think back to when I first realized I wanted to write about movies. Unfortunately, it ultimately caused me to watch a movie I tried long and hard to block from my memory.

Growing up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, I lived across the street from the White City Shopping Centre (*), which housed the now defunct and demolished White City Cinemas (or the “triplex” as it was referred to by some). Without a family car to take me to other amusements such as the park and the library (*) on a weekend, snow day, or any day during the summer, it was easy for my mother to take me to the movies and keep me from complaining about how bored I was.

Almost as soon as I was old enough to cross the street on my own, I was going to the movies by myself; since my mother worked days and my father insisted movies were a waste of money (*). Every summer on Fridays I would go to the theatre whatever new releases arrived in my neighbourhood (*).

For a long time I was easily pleased by what I saw. Some films I can look back on and realize they are no where near as good as I remember them being (“I Love Trouble,” I am looking at you.). Some movies I was far too young to comprehend, like the Michael Mann thriller “Heat” which I thought was a slow moving mess at the time, but now regard as a great film with a crappy ending. However, I will never forget the first movie I saw that was an outright piece of shit.

It was a warm August morning in 1996 when my faith in Hollywood’s product was shattered. I had bought my ticket unwittingly based on the “kick assedness” of a film’s trailer. I waited patiently to be let in to the first show of the day, as well as the entire two week run, of “Chain Reaction”

For all the grief cineastes give Keanu Reeves he really isn’t that terrible of an actor. Morgan Freeman has always maintained his dignity even when in pieces of tripe like “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Dreamcatcher,” and the Rob Reiner helmed “let’s all laugh in the face of cancer” romp “The Bucket List.” The supporting cast included character actors Fred Ward and Brian Cox, as well as a then mostly unknown Rachel Weisz. Andrew Davis had just come off directing the Academy Award nominated adaptation of “The Fugitive.” Even at the age of fourteen I knew this seemed like the equivalent of Michael Jordan shooting free throws in an empty arena.

I settled in for the movie and left an hour and fifty minutes later feeling completely cheated and pissed off. I only remembered bits and pieces of the movie over the years after I saw it, but there were two things that always stuck with me.

First and foremost was the feeling that I had while watching it. In the movie’s first half hour I was bored and knew something was amiss. Slowly my boredom gave way to out and out laughter at how each scene in the movie was progressively more ridiculous than the one that came before it.

Secondly, I remembered that the plot was so overly complex that it made absolutely no sense. I always remembered it being incoherent, but over the years of swearing that I would never watch it again, the feeling stayed, but what little details I could understand from the movie faded away.

Recently, I decided to start writing about movies again as a kind of writing exercise to get me back in the habit of writing something substantial every day. My next blog will start my series about movies from the 1980’s that were either forgotten about or have gone on to attain some sort of cult status, but “Chain Reaction” was always destined to be my starting point; a way to describe the method behind my madness.

And one day last week, destiny roundhouse kicked me in the face. “Chain Reaction” was going to be on television in the middle of the afternoon when I had nothing else going on.

I wrestled with my conflicting feelings like Brad Pitt at the end of “Seven” before finally pulling the trigger on my experiment. I always had a soft spot for movies described as “schlock” or “crap,” and over the years had come to embrace even the worst films with a sense of humour. I also knew that I had seen far worse movies since 1996, but the mention of this movie still sent chills up and down my spine 12 years after I saw it.

I was going to sit down and watch a movie that I loathed as a teenager (that due to commercials was now extended to a ghastly two hours and twenty minutes) with hopes of being objective. I had a couple of years of film school under my belt and decided to watch the movie only to figure out why it didn’t work as either a movie or as mindless entertainment. I did, however, retain the right to laugh along or reach for a bottle of rum should the pain become unbearable.

In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert explained that so much happens in “Chain Reaction” and so little of it makes any sense that he gave up taking notes once he hit page eight almost halfway through the movie. He is a far stronger man than I was while watching it. I made it to page two, but in my defence I was using a full sized notebook and small handwriting as opposed to the smaller pad and chicken scratch a critic would most likely use in a darkened theatre. I made it only slightly further in my note taking than the film’s Wikipedia entry which stops explaining the movie less than halfway through.

The movie really is that much of a mess, but what really sinks the experience is the fact that it wants to be three different movies at the same time: an intelligent “techno-thriller” about corporate and government corruption, a thrill a minute chase film with no brain at all, and a mystery. While some movies like the recent Jason Bourne films can deftly balance all three elements, the viewer who watches “Chain Reaction” is not able to easily follow along because when one of the three elements I listed starts up, the other two promptly stop while the movie wildly flails and cycles its way though each of them.

Keanu (merely biding his time here between “Speed” and “The Matrix”) plays a not-so-wild-and-crazy scientist freshly kicked out of the University of Illinois with a penchant for oversized sweatshirts that look like they were stolen and mothballed from the set of “Flashdance.” Apparently the project he is working on is his last real shot in the scientific community since his last experiment destroyed a building on campus. When Fred Ward’s detective questions Keanu’s boss, played by Freeman, about the incident, Freeman defends Keanu’s work by quickly pointing out that the “experiment would have been brilliant had it worked.”

Freeman (playing a man named Shannon, who may or may not be who he seems or doesn’t seem), Reeves, and Weisz (playing Reeves’ assistant) work in a warehouse so dimly lit that you know eventually something bad will happen there. Together under Freeman’s supervision they are working in said warehouse on the theoretically very real concept of “bubble fusion.”

As the film’s preachy opening speech that would make Al Gore rolls his eyes tells us, there is enough energy in a glass of water to power Chicago for weeks. Keanu is tasked with harnessing the hydrogen atoms from a giant glass of water (ok, it’s really a tank) through sonoluminescence, which means playing the sound of grinding metal through a microphone and pointing at the tank until the water boils.

As various nerdy types say “is it stable?” 15 times in the first five minutes of the movie, the experiment works and everyone is so jazzed about finding a renewable source of energy they proceed to celebrate by getting shitfaced, popping hydrogen filled balloons with a blow torch, and taking a group photo after a thoroughly bored and unconvincing Freeman instructs everyone to say “Holy shit we did it!” instead of “cheese.”

I don’t know if my ADD kicked in or if the movie was somehow edited for television, but right when Reeves and Weisz stumble out of the warehouse drunk, I know I am lost, and hopelessly so. Weisz, goes, um, somewhere and Keanu goes back inside to get, um, something or talk to someone and he finds the man who gave the opening speech (who I didn’t think was all that important) dead on the floor. Two other scientists of little importance other than to get the “plot” of the movie going who stayed late (and apparently sober, as well) to preach the wonders of their new energy source all over the internet; have also been killed by some one or thing. The giant water tank is also boiling like a bunch of forgotten Kraft dinner on a stovetop.

Keanu runs from the warehouse in horror on his clearly being towed motorcycle in hoped of out running the apparently imminent explosion, which he manages to do by sliding his bike into a very conveniently place ditch in the middle of the street. The explosion ends up taking out somewhere between five and eight city blocks, depending on what character is talking, despite the fact that the warehouse is clearly in the middle of nowhere.

Naturally, the FBI shows up wanting answers and Fred Ward shows up to play a detective so hard nosed he could head butt his way through prison bars. Someone has pinned the explosion and the murders on Reeves and framed Weisz for trying to sell the concept to the Koreans.

From there we venture more into director Davis’ forte and the film has the chance to become a still incoherent, but a technically well crafted rip off of “The Fugitive,” and ultimately the movie fails even before it has the chance to get started.

Reeves and Weisz go on the run and find themselves caught in a web of deceit and a series of increasingly ludicrous set pieces they need to escape from; one requires hovercrafts and another requires Keanu to run up the slowly opening Michigan Avenue drawbridge and somehow develop ninja like skill to get away.

The action sequences could work well on their own, but the characters are thrust into them so arbitrarily and so quickly that the viewer isn’t given a chance to care about them or at the very least have a clue as to why they are really running. They are only running because they think they should run, and because there wouldn’t be a movie if they didn’t.

It was shortly after the bridge chase that I gave up taking notes. I was already too annoyed and pissed off to care. I tapped out like a wrestler caught in a submission manoeuvre. I just couldn’t do it.

From there the action continues and red herrings litter the screen like they blew up the fucking bay. Everyone is a suspect; no one is safe; the conspiracy reaches to the highest branches of government this movie will allow. I can tell you how the movie ends, but what is the point when I couldn’t tell you in pluperfect hell how it got to that point. I gave up taking notes and promptly started vacuuming the living room in hopes of drowning out the sound, and it was just as coherent as I remembered it being when I was young.

It certainly helped the careers of the talent involved that the script was the reason the movie ultimately tanked at the box office. Reeves and Weisz moved on to bigger and better things; eventually reuniting for the I-can’t-believe-I-am-saying-this-is-better-than-anything “Constantine.” Freeman regularly has failures like this, but he seems to be Teflon coated and none of them really stick. Andrew Davis directed “Holes” and I don’t mean that as a “dig.” The writers (all five of them) have fared far worse in their careers, although two of them have good day jobs as producers.

And then it hit me. “Chain Reaction” didn’t make me want to be a critic. It made me want to be a better writer; one that could turn out something better than what I saw. I remember writing my first screenplay that week; a romantic-comedy/action-thriller. It was fucking terrible, but at least it lit a fire under me. And looking back over what I have just written I feel that same joy and sense of accomplishment that I did back then.

Someone once said the difference between having someone as a nemesis and having someone as an enemy is that on the day you die the nemesis will feel bad and would attend your funeral. An enemy would wish you nothing but the worst, but a nemesis is so jealous of you they end up envying your every move. I am already envious of the people who made something as terrible as “Chain Reaction” and downright jealous of the fact that it made it to theatres. As such, anyone and everyone involved with “Chain Reaction” are hereby invited to my funeral.

Personal Side Notes:

-Technically I lived behind a block of stores and restaurants, but I could see the theatre’s marquee from my bedroom window and I would watch them change the sign every Thursday night. In front of my house there was a Burger King, Scooby’s (a fish and chips shop that later became Boston Chicken, which was renamed Boston Market when it became a worldwide chain, and then became a McDonald’s shortly before I moved), a Chinese restaurant, a motorcycle/snowblower dealership, and East Side Mario’s. When anyone asked me where I lived and I said “right across from White City,” if the kid was a smartass the conversation would continue like this:

Smartass: “You live at Burger King?”

Me: “No, behind that.”

Smartass: “East Side Mario’s?”

Me: “No, that is beside it dickless.”

Smartass: “Ha, ha. You live at fucking Burger King.”

Me: “Forget it.”

-Being an avid reader, having the library so far from my house was a major hindrance since my parents never wanted to take me there even on the bus. Once, no matter how hard I begged my father to take me, he denied me in favour of trying to beat one of the underwater levels in the first Super Mario Brothers game. He kept swearing at the jellyfish and I was told to stop crying about not going to the library.

-My father liked exactly three movies that I can remember: “Ben-Hur,” “Silence of the Lambs,” and “Maniac Cop 2.”

-Since my mother worked at the Friendly’s restaurant next to the movie theatre everything included R-rated movies I shouldn’t have been able to get into. Everyone in that plaza knew each other, and as long as my mom didn’t care what I saw, neither did the staff.