When Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu Reeves) helps solve the mystery of hydrogen energy it's probably the happiest moment of his life, so after celebrating he takes his slightly intoxicated co worker, Dr. Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz) to her apartment he then heads back to the lab for his bike expecting everything to be fine but instead he finds a murdered friend and a bomb on the brink of explosion. Not being able to stop it Eddie narrowly escapes death by speeding of on his motorcycle. When the smoke settles and the investigation, led by FBI agent Ford (Fred Ward) gets underway it becomes clear to Eddie and lily that they are being set up for the murder and explosion, so they decide to go on the lamb to try to solve the crime themselves thereby proving there innocence.

Unfortunately for them the only help they get comes from their project leader, Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman) who turns out to be the inside guy for the government funded group responsible for the explosion. So after a game of cat and mouse gets played and Eddie and Dr. lily Sinclair get to the bottom of things (and of course spark a love interest in each other) Dr. Sinclair gets herself caught. Out of options Eddie is forced to attempt a rescue himself, Which leads him to the governments hidden research center that he (with a little technical ingenuity) blows up, therefore exposing all the crime and corruption to the FBI as well as releasing all of the hydrogen energy secrets to the world via the internet. So Eddie and lily are free, the bad guys dead except Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman) whom miraculously escapes unscathed, and everyone lives happily ever after.

If I almost put you to sleep I’m sorry but that’s the effect this movie has. It’s a played out storyline with less than effective acting which is why you don’t see chain reaction being replayed on television. As a matter of fact I was wondering how I have missed this movie considering it came out in 1996 but after watching, it made perfect sense. The real shame of it is that there is a stellar cast in this film and the extra effects were acceptable but it just didn’t come together enough to present as a good movie. The only person deserving of recognition in this film would be Morgan Freeman and his character of Paul Shannon ( the government employee who plays on both sides of the fence). He comes across as a caring person who has to do bad things because its his job but more importantly he stays cool and calm always whether ordering the death of a friend or being the only one to escape when all the bad guys get caught or killed. Unfortunately you can’t expect one character in the film to carry the whole movie and save it from being a flop.

More amazingly to me is the fact that in November of 2005 this movie was re-released on UMD for the PSP, I thought that the point in bringing a film from one format to another, was that they were popular movies in the first place. Therefore in my opinion this film isn’t worth wasting your time unless you are a huge Keanu fan and don’t care what he’s in, or you like these churned out Hollywood films then by all means………

As far as the video quality on the PSP goes, it was fine, everything was easily viewable and the detail was good. Another thing found lacking is the fact that there are no extras on this UMD but it may be for the best. Rated PG 13 for language and violence with an approximate runtime of 106 minutes. Released for PSP on November 22 2005.