CHAOS WALKING : Tuesday 9th March 2021.

I saw 'CHAOS WALKING' at my local multiplex this week. This M Rated American Sci-Fi action adventure film is Directed by Doug Liman whose prior film making credits take in the likes of 'Swingers' in 1996, 'The Bourne Identity' in 2002, 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' in 2005, 'Fair Game' in 2010, 'Edge of Tomorrow' in 2014, and 'The Wall' and 'American Made' both in 2017. This film is based on the Sci-Fi trilogy 'Chaos Walking', adapting its first book, 2008's 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' by Patrick Ness. First announced in 2011, the film had undergone several rewrites with Liman later announced as the Director in 2016, with principal photography fully started and finished around 2017. Originally set for release on 1st March 2019, it was removed from schedule to accommodate the films' reshoots in April 2019 following poor audience test screenings. It saw its World Premiere in South Korea on 24th February this year and was released in the US and Australia last week. Costing US$100M to produce, the film has so far grossed US$7M and has garnered mixed or average Reviews. 

Our film opens up on a distant habitable world (not unlike planet Earth), known as New World in the year 2257 AD. We are first introduced to Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) walking through the woods with his trusted dog in tow. On the path into Prentisstown, where he lives he comes across Aaron (David Oyelowo) a radical preacher riding his horse. Aaron gets down off his horse and thumps Todd squarely in the face sending him reeling backwards. This is because of 'The Noise' - a force that puts everyone's thoughts on display and for everyone to see and hear. Clearly Aaron was none too pleased at the noise emanating from Todds head. Aaron mounts his horse and heads onward, leaving Todd to collect his thoughts and continue into Prentisstown. Once there Davy Prentiss Jnr. (Nick Jonas) siddles up on horseback and chastises Todd who retaliates with the thought of huge snake rising up against him which causes Davy's horse to buck throwing him off. Appearing shortly afterwards is David Prentiss (Mads Mikkelsen) the Mayor of Prentisstown, who tells the two young lads to stop playing, and commends Todd for his clever snake thought.  

Returning to his farm that night and over dinner with Ben Moore (Demian Bechir) and Cillian Boyd (Kurt Sutter) his adoptive fathers, Ben tells Todd that he is needed to work the farm the next day. The next morning while Todd goes to the barn in search for some tools, he spies a mystery figure dressed in orange jump out of a barn window and leg it into the woods. Todd gives chase and comes across the scene of a recently downed spacecraft whose wreckage is strewn over a large area. His thoughts are to immediately advise David Prentiss of his findings, who rapidly organises a search party for the mystery man. 

Returning to the crash site David Prentiss, Todd and a bunch of other men scour the scene salvaging what serviceable technology they can, whilst searching for a girl, Prentiss has quickly determined. Gingerly seeking out the mysterious figure Todd comes across a girl (Daisy Ridley), and is taken aback because he has never seen a girl before. It turns out that the alien species who inhabited New World, known as the Spackle, released a germ that killed all the women and unleashed 'The Noise' on the remaining men. Todd's own mother was killed by the Spackle shortly after he was born. The girl does not speak, but chooses to run in a bid to escape. 

It's not long before David Prentiss and his men catch up with the girl, and take her back to Prentisstown. There she is questioned and we learn that her spacecraft burned up on entry into New World's atmosphere and the rest of her crew all perished. David has ulterior motives for his line of questions - in particular his interest in the mother ship which carries four thousand people and its means to get them off New World. Following an incident in which the girl is left alone with Davy Jnr., the girl again escapes and from under the building where she is hiding she can easily overhear a conversation David is having with some others saying that it is in everyone's interests to capture the girl, to do it quickly before she is able to contact the mother ship, and that she poses a threat to them all. 

While David is off organising a search party, the girl lays low in the barn of Todd's farm, unbeknownst to him. He goes inside and discovers her, and tells her that he doesn't want to harm her, is there to help her and to remain out of sight. He then tells his fathers Ben and Cillian, who reluctantly agree to harbour the girl, but tell Todd that he needs to get far away from Prentisstown and to go to Farbranch another community some distance away. Ben shows him a map which Todd commits to memory, and is told not to tell anyone at Farbranch that they are from Prentisstown. It's not long however, before David arrives at the farm demanding to know the whereabouts the girl. Todd gives away the girls location in the barn through his noise. Inside the barn the girl has hot-wired a motorbike and makes her escape on it. Todd jumps on a horse and follows in hot pursuit, duly followed by a posse of David's men. David meanwhile shoots Cillian in the stomach and he lies there dying in Bens arms.

After falling down a steep gully in the woods, the motorbike is trashed and the horse suffers a broken leg which sees Todd put his trusted steed out of its misery. They continue on foot, and camp out in the rain overnight. The girl introduces herself to Todd as Viola Eade and says she has never seen or felt rain before. It took her mother ship sixty-four years to travel from Earth to New World. She was born on it, as were her parents who have subsequently died, and it was her grandparents who set forth from Earth all those years ago in search of new worlds to colonise. 

They venture deeper into the forest trying to find the path to Farbranch. They come across a clearing and a Spackle alien. Todd and the Spackle fight with Todd gaining the upper hand and holding the Spackle's head under the water of a nearby stream and stabbing away furiously at the alien. Viola urges Todd to stop. He does so reluctantly, as the Spackle gets up, recovers himself and walks away nonchalantly glancing back over its shoulder as it does so. 

Eventually they come to Farbranch and they are surprised to find a community that has sheep in a paddock, grapes growing on trellised vines, and a big contingent of women and girls. The mayor of the town is female too - Hildy Black (Cynthia Erivo) who takes in the pair and provides them with safe harbour, despite the ruling that any man from Prentisstown entering Farbranch will be given the rope (ie. hanged). When Todd lets slip through his noise that he is in fact from Prentisstown, the menfolk want to string him up immediately, but Hildy says that he's just a boy and therefore the rule doesn't apply. It's here we learn one evening that Ben slipped Todd's mothers journal into his pack before he set off. He confesses to Viola that he cannot read and was never taught, in the belief that hearing others mens thoughts was all the education he would ever need. So Viola reads the journal and it is revealed that David Prentiss engineered the execution of all the woman, because the menfolk couldn't bear the women knowing their every thought, while the men couldn't bear not knowing what their women were thinking. The next day David rocks up to Farbranch with his posse and a stand-off ensues with Hildy and her community. 

David demands to know the location of the girl, and sends Ben in to retrieve her from a storage facility. Ben uses his noise to project an image of Viola to appease David momentarily so giving her and Todd the opportunity to escape. Hildy had previously told Todd that the next community, Haven, contains a means of communicating with the mother ship, so they venture forth. In the meantime, Todd and Ben argue saying that he now knows the truth behind the slaying of all the women and why did Ben lie to him all these past years. Ben is distraught, and offers to make amends to allow their escape, even if it means sacrificing himself. They come to a river bank upon which is tied a two man barge. They see this as a means of evade their pursuers but Aaron catches up with them on horseback and follows them into the river. Viola can't swim, and approaching a set of rapids Aaron latches onto Viola and drags her off the barge with Todd attempting to beat off the preacher. In the white water Viola is dragged under the upturned barge and she is separated from Todd and Aaron. Todd resurfaces and rescues Viola while Aaron emerges on the other side of the embankment and holds Todd's dog under the water drowning it. 

Collecting themselves and gathering their thoughts, they continue onwards coming to the remains of a downed mother ship that was the first in the fleet that landed initially on New World years ago. It is half buried and completely wrecked, but Viola says that there is a means of communicating two levels down that will still be active. They both climb down into the bowels of the former ship and locate the communication device, but there is no signal as the antennae is down. Todd offers to climb up several levels to reconnect the antennae, which he does successfully, but from on high notices David's posse approaching. In the meantime Aaron has re-emerged and gets into a fight with Viola as she is attempting to reconnect. Needless to say its doesn't end well for Aaron who is last seen screaming that he has been baptised by fire - literally! Viola connects with her mothership once the antennae is restored. Todd has clambered down and is confronted by David. Todd attacks David with a knife, David shoots Todd in the shoulder as he is running for cover, and Viola appears and pushes David over the edge of a badly damaged wing sending him falling several storeys below into the guts of the spaceship - presumably to his certain death. 

Viola's mothership then appears in the sky above them. Todd comes round on the mothership having been out of it for several days, his shoulder wound having been treated and almost healed with Viola looking on. They both look down on New World and see a new community in the throes of construction. 

'Chaos Walking' isn't a bad film, but it's also not that great. For a start there is very little by way of world building here given that this film is set 230+ years into the future and New World has the look and feel of our very own planet Earth, even though it is supposedly sixty-four years away. And this Sci-Fi, dystopian action drama part Western is a muddled concoction of teenage angst, wannabe romance and a wilderness survival movie that is aided along by the pairing of two young talented screen actors in Holland and Ridley intent on going their own way following their big budget franchise outings of recent years. And Mads Mikkelsen who is always watchable despite his character being undercooked does manage to be the glue that binds the film together, with mostly surplus to requirement performances from Oyelowo and Erivo regrettably. As for the Spackle who supposedly inflicted the Noise on the male population, well they barely get a look in save for one sequence when a fist fight breaks out between Todd and an one armed indigenous alien that ends as quickly as it started - enough said (and seen) it seems! Doug Liman who has enjoyed many successes throughout his career here offers up an interesting premise, with well enough realised set pieces but it lacks energy, urgency and emotion and ends up being conventional, predictable and lacking in substance, clearly not helped by its troubled shoot and protracted delays. 

'Chaos Walking' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-