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Nolan Night channels and lets loose with CHAOS!
Hey folks, Harry here... shockingly - this isn't a remake of an Asian film of the same name - that's coming in 2006. This, however, is coming in late summer to early Fall 2005. Which means they've got forever and a year to basically fine tune what could only have been an initial assembly of the movie. The below reviewer gets pretty harsh with the end of the film - but as we all know... this far out, especially on thrillers... This film doesn't have distribution yet, but with Jason Statham and the rest of this cast, there was something that attracted them to this project... Hopefully - this'll become something really cool some day. Now beware of spoilers...
Longtime reader of your site Mr. Knowles and figured I'd throw in my two cents of a wayyy advance screening of Chaos, starring (in order of screentime) Ryan Phillipe, Jason Statham and Wesley Snipes. I think the name of the guy who wrote and directed this was Mike Agiglio or something along those lines, it didn't sound familiar to me, but he stuck around afterwards to hear the focus group, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The movie begins in slam bang fashion with a car chase involving a hostage. Jason Statham's character catches up to the criminal and the criminal's hostage and is somehow involved in her death (I won't say how because it comes up later in the plot). So he is suspended from the force until a bank heist executed by Wesley Snipes and a few other guys, which draws him back onto the force because Wesley will only talk to him. The catch is that Statham has to be followed around by Phillipe to keep him out of control. Okay. Whew. Moving on.
So the bank robbery (probably the best sequence in the film) goes well and the criminals get away. Phillipe and Statham must track them down. The movie's title comes from Phillipe's belief that Snipes has somehow studied The Chaos Theory. This was interesting until approximately two seconds later when the entire thread is dropped by the film makers who are more concerned with Statham and Phillipe getting shot at and shooting things.
The plot moves slowly, with the only interesting twists few and far between. The heist as I've said is well done and complex, but once that's out of the way it's just a matter of shooting at Wesley and missing. The chemistry between Statham and Phillipe is forced at best. The best I can say about the action is "mediocre." **TINY SPOILER** Snipes's character's inability to shoot at anything but a stationary target is a bit interesting considering the "huge revelation" that he was at one time a cop.
To get to my main criticism of the film- the plot twist at the end of the movie is HORRIBLE. And by HORRIBLE I mean defying all logic. Not that you can't see it coming- it screams "STUDIO." I'm not one to give a movie away, so you won't hear it from me, but expect extreme dissapointment at the resolution of this movie, particularly as it makes one character's motivations ENTIRELY STUPID.
At the end of the screening I had to sit through a focus group to get a movie pass, so I did. The filmmakers seemed happy because about half of the audience seemed pacified with the "average" thriller. Whether there is time enough for re-shoots I'm not entirely sure, I think they are aiming for a summer release, so probably not. It's not that I'm dissapointed because the movie on the whole was god-awful, it's that it pretends to be something it's not- smart.
- Nolan Night
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Yet another Japanese film remake ...
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With so many Japanese remakes and Hideo Nakata also being mentioned a lot, I couldn't wait to say why ???
Mind you with the Japanese Chaos, it wasn't perfect, especially the ending which seemed to be along the lines of not having any idea how to finish the film. -
Nov 11, 2004 5:35:45 AM CST
Not all American remakes of Japanese films are bad - "Magnificen
by some dude
I'd like to see Tsukamoto do a big budget "Tetsuo the Iron Man."
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The pics are gone! I was going to show them to my mother! Damn you! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!
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Jonathon Glazer directing De Niro and Benicio del Toro? That's what the Frightfest hand out from Tartan Asia Extreme reckoned...
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I noticed they pulled the article from yesterday. I guess AICN got slapped by the movie studio.
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I guess that every character is actually a cop, working undercover, but nobody knows from each other they are cops. Something predictable and stupid like that. Or is it even worse. The "It-was-all-a-dream" scenario.
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Since they're testing this so far in advance, that bad ending you speak of might change. The test screenings are there for three things: to start word of mouth buzz, to change/delete any scenes and to find out how to market the movie to the public. The question they always have on all the forms is, "What did you think of the ending?" So they may have an alternate in the wings if enough people thought it was crap.
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It's bad enough when people try to sound smart by name-dropping (and mis-applying) scientific principles to explain everyday common-sense ideas. But it's even worse when a writer thinks that actually "studyiing" (!) chaos theory would increase someone's bank-robbery skills. PLEASE! Everytime I hear or read "chaos theory", "butterfly effect", "uncertainty principle", "theory of relativity", "fractals", "
quantum effect", etc. in a work of fiction, my bullshit detector turns on. 9 times out of 10, the common-sense idea being explained (often by **misusing** a scientific idea) has been known since ancient times. (e.g., small actions can have large unforseen consequences--wow!) (e.g., the part is sometimes a microcosm of the whole--woopie!) (e.g., things look different depending on where you stand.)
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Ran was a good movie!
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Actually, of all the scientific principles, I think the one that might most be useful as an analogy for a plot point is the idea (from the uncertainty principle) that the observer will affect the observed. I don't recall off-hand any old stories or proverbs that really emphasize this point. In contrast, for things like the butterfly effect, there have been old stories and proverbs such as "for want of a nail, ..., the kindom was lost". Similarly, for the common mis-construing of relativity ("things look different depending on where you are" [sic]), there were stories such as the one with blind men trying to describe an elephant by describing its parts.
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Little shout-out to any Avengers #503 readers. whoohoo.
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...at not one of Nakata's Chaos. I mean, did any of you who posted actually see it?
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It's been a long time since Hollywood put out a great gunfight movie. Not since the classic "Heat" starring DeNiro & Pacino has there been a great shootout in a Hollywood film. So don't listen to this reviewer; if the filmmakers made a non-stop action movie then release a non-stop action movie. There's no point in trying to turn it into a deep drama when it was never meant to be one--you'll end up with a piece of indecisive crap that has neither good action nor good story.
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That is a pretty lame way to end a series on tv or any movie,no matter what genre,so here's my question. I just watched Day of the Dead two nights ago,in the end when they reach the helicopter and the zombie arms are flailing around the woman screams then wakes up on a an island... Ok and now to think of it the original Dawn of the dead ends with them knowing that the helicopter is out of gas.Obviously a ton of people that visit this site love those movies and rightfuly so,but isn't that a lame ending to "Day of"? or i'm i way off base as usual?
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What happened to the pictures?
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Nov 13, 2004 8:47:54 AM CST
Absolutely right, eraser_x! And the worst offender is Michael C
by frankdrebin
Everytime a new buzzword comes along (chaos theory, Mandlebrot set, prions, "business is war"), he'll try to shoehorn it into a plot.
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