The Chaos Experiment Should Have Stayed in the Lab
The Chaos Experiment’s director, Philippe Martinez, urges everyone in the sauna to overact to their heart’s content, but he hasn’t given them anything meaty to do. One of the six, a Brooklyn wise guy, even says “fuhgetaboutit” at one point, as if reading from a central casting handbook.
We’re also treated to one gratuitous nude scene and endless slow-motion shots, all the better to pad the film’s running time.
Kilmer, whose career has sagged in recent years, once plied on his peculiar tics for roles in The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Doors. He’s always been a mercurial actor, inventing pregnant pauses where none rightly exist and bringing his own sense of the surreal to even straight-laced roles.
He’s working on material far beneath him here, but he gives the professor the kind of controlled mania the film sorely needs. For a while that kind of juice gives Chaos a kick. But no amount of Kilmer-style ham can make up for the secondary story.
Roberts tries to anchor his half of the tale, but he’s surrounded by scenery chewers, all of whom look remarkably trim to be part of a dating service.
Chaos provides some Saw-style bloodletting, and the social experiment theme plays like it’s on 77 RPMs. But horror hounds won’t find enough gristle here to make the film worth a look.
Near the end, as if desperate to achieve the minimal 90 minute running time, we’re treated to even more slow motion camera tricks. But we care nothing for the people entrapped. In fact, audiences might start rooting for the steam hoses.
When modern films dabble in global warming, we typically get horror tales (The Day After Tomorrow) or sanctimonious screeds (An Inconvenient Truth).
Chaos’ global warming angle certainly intrigues if only for the novel spin placed upon it. Here’s a movie daring to suggest global warming fear mongers might be a little … insane. Or are they? The film takes some serious detours in the waning moments, few of which will leave viewers satisfied.
Frankly, ideologues on both the right and the left won’t take much away from the film’s storyline.
The Chaos Experiment deserves praise for not following the media template on “climate change,” but it’s still a far cry from a respectable night with your DVD player.
I pretty much stopped watching anything Kilmer did after the disappointing “The Saint” and the absolutely appalling “Batman Forever”. (The latter played like an episode of the 1960s Adam West TV version as “re-imagined” by somebody who directs music videos for a living.) His two good films, that I am aware of, are “Tombstone” and “The Ghost and the Darkness”- both of which are set in the 19th Century on frontiers (America and Africa).
Kilmer seems to do a good job of playing roles requiring little dialogue and a fairly sedate brand of action. Anything requiring any sort of grasp of abstract concepts seems to be beyond him. (Batman and Simon Templar being cases in point.) This film would seem to be yet another indication that he is limited in this respect.
And as Clint Eastwood famously remarked, “A man’s got to know his limitations”.
clear ether
eon
Val Kilmer needs to get out of his bubble then, perhaps, he may start making good movies again; otherwise, he will remain on DVD-limbo. I can see The Chaos Experiment quickly added to the Sci-Fi channels list of horrible films they show every weekend.
Val Kilmer is in good stead with Tom Cruise at this point.
Eon,
Kilmer’s back catalog has much more worth mining than the two you mention, which I have not seen — he can be superbly hilarious in comedies:
Top Secret – sort of the precursor to Airplane. I still have to laugh every time I think of the Nazi boots scene and a few others…like “It’s like some kind of bad movie.”
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Underappreciated smart, funny movie with a great pairing of Kilmer with Robert Downey Jr.
And many would also throw in Real Genius (I think it’s called), which I enjoyed, but not as much as the other two.
Talented guy. It’s a shame to see him reduced to this.
I will second “Kiss kiss bang bang”. He was also great in Tombstone. Maybe he is not liberal enough to get more roles. . .