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CHAOS WALKING
Director: Doug Liman Cast: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Mads Mikkelsen, Demián Bichir, David Oyelowo, Nick Jonas, Cynthia Erivo, Kurt Sutter, Ray McKinnon MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:49 Release Date: 3/5/21 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 4, 2021 The opening shots of Chaos Walking establish the strange, futuristic world of 2257, on some distant planet dubbed "the New World." There, on this world surrounded by a ring of space rocks, human settlers have established a colony, certainly to evade whatever troubles we have caused on Earth. Our young hero Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) lives there, working as a beet farmer and trying to find his way. Shortly after meeting the protagonist, a cloud of blue and purple rises from his head, and his thoughts echo from the mist. Everyone can hear them, and everyone else's thoughts are voiced into reality in the same way. Just as quickly as the filmmakers show us something promising, they give us something almost untenably strange. The idea that people's thoughts, dubbed by the locals of this planet as "noise," exist to be heard by everyone does have some potential, for sure. The way in which Doug Liman visualizes that gimmick, though, calls so much attention to it that it immediately becomes more of a joke than an idea. It doesn't help that Patrick Ness and Christopher Fords' screenplay (based—loosely, apparently, since the movie tells a whole, completed story from an entire trilogy of books—on Ness' novel The Knife of Never Letting Go) is so focused on plot and action that the concept becomes an unintentional running gag. It's hard not to laugh at a hero who can't bluff his way out of a jam and gives away his position while being hunted, simply because he can't shut up his thoughts for a couple of seconds. This is a big, ambitious oddity, revolving around an idea so weird that it's kind of amazing the movie was made in the first place. The central gimmick is so strange, in fact, that we can't stop considering how odd everything surrounding it is, too. Take the colony itself, which looks quite ramshackle for a place founded on a planet that takes more than 60 years to reach. With the kind of technology necessary for interplanetary travel, surely the colonists would have better materials available for infrastructure than wood and modes of transport more reliable than horses. The settlement looks as if it has been made—not for practical utility—for the aesthetics of the Old West. As for the horses, we do later learn that they were transported via cryogenic chambers, while humans live out what remains or most of their lives getting to the planet. Wouldn't it make more sense to save the chambers for the people and do away with the horses entirely? Anyway, Todd discovers the wreckage of a spaceship and wants to keep it a secret—which means the entire town learns about its existence in a matter of seconds upon his return. Aboard was the sole survivor of the crash, a woman named Viola (Daisy Ridley), who is a member of the second group of settlers. No one can hear her thoughts, because the thought-amplifying quality of the planet only affects men for some unexplained, inexplicable reason. All of the women in Todd's town, according to Mayor Prentiss (Mads Mikkelsen), were killed off by the native creatures of the planet (Viola, whose presentation as a strong co-protagonist is undercut by the movie intrinsically putting the importance of Todd's thinking over her own, scolds the guy for calling them "aliens"). If Todd's frustration about being unable to know what Viola is thinking doesn't give away the story's big secret, one will just have to wait for the obvious twist to be revealed. As silly as the idea of the effect of the noise being segregated by gender may be, there's surely some potential cultural, social, psychological, or political point that could come from this distinction and its consequences. That's for a movie that cares more about actual ideas and less about gimmickry, though. After Todd fails to hide Viola from the townsfolk (because, of course, he does), the two have to escape to another settlement. A lot of awkward interactions—between an immaturely eager Todd, who can't stop thinking about or imagining himself kissing Viola, and the understandably uncomfortable Viola—and plenty of standoffs/action sequences undermined by the ridiculous implementation of the weird gimmick ensue. It's a struggle to get past or accept that gimmick, especially in the way Liman portrays it. Chaos Walking, though, primarily suffers because the screenwriters fail to do anything with the gimmick that doesn't involve the increasingly ridiculous plot. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence and language)
