‘Chain Reaction’ Creates Lots Of Heat, But Goes Nowhere

All I can tell you about “Chain Reaction” is that some people are running away from something toward something else and they end up somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Most of the signs of Action Movie Distress are here: a gigantic orchestra playing lush, send-in-the-cavalry music; a distinguished British actor/villain overacting (Brian Cox, doing a hambone Southern accent); a plot that gets needlessly complex in an attempt to divert us from the fact that the movie doesn’t make a lick of sense. “Chain Reaction” isn’t a movie; it’s a chase scene.

Keanu Reeves plays a brilliant machinist, and you’ll have to decide whether “brilliant” or “machinist” is harder to swallow (the sight of Reeves operating a lathe is one of the movie’s few pleasures, albeit an unintentional one).

He’s knee-deep in a hush-hush project that involves turning water into fuel. So is a comely physicist/ditz played by Rachel Weisz and a mysterious executive played by Morgan Freeman. When the project goes boom-boom, Reeves goes on the lam for the usual reason: “Someone’s setting me up. I’m not going to the cops.”

Of course, the real reason he goes on the lam is because there wouldn’t be a movie if he didn’t. “Chain Reaction” is so full of improbabilities that even the geography doesn’t make sense: Reeves does his lathing in Chicago, but somehow he ends up in Washington, D.C. We don’t know how he got to Washington, D.C., and, more to the point, we can’t even tell he’s supposed to be in Washington, D.C. (the problem is that the filmmakers were too cheap to go to D.C. - the Washington scenes were filmed at Chicago’s very recognizable Museum of Science and Industry).

Movies don’t have to have a lot of plot - “Chain Reaction” director Andrew Davis was also responsible for “The Fugitive,” which had the simplest story imaginable. But “The Fugitive” had great characters and two terrific actors.

Aside from one compelling bit in which a bomb is about to explode, all “Chain Reaction” does is rip off “MacGyver,” with Reeves using some paper clips and a couple of cement blocks to make a thermonuclear device. You know, just the kind of crazy thing those brilliant machinists are always doing.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “CHAIN REACTION” Locations: Lincoln Heights, Newport and Coeur d’Alene cinemas Credits: directed by Andrew Davis; starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Brian Cox and Rachel Weisz. Running time: 1:50 Rating: PG-13