CHAOS WALKING (2021) – Spiderman meets Star Wars’ Rey in a dystopian world

This is a low budget and low key science fiction movie based off yet another series of novels for the young adults. Hence, the choice of casting the young Tom Holland whom we all love so much as the current Spiderman and Diasy Ridley who was young and innocent Rey in the new Star Wars movies. I think the both Holland and Ridley are very accomplished actors and their screen presence and chemistry together here works well. What doesn’t work that well is perhaps the way the story is contrived. Set in the distant future where humanity have begun to settle in a new planet. However, the planet has this strange effect on humans where they are able to hear each other’s thoughts!! Even more incredible is that this seems to only effect the men resulting in women having the upper hand to be able to listen in to the thoughts of the men while being able to keep theirs a secret!

Interesting premise although conveniently devoid of any logical explanation since it is after all science fiction which allows the author to have the liberty to invent whatever rules or conditions existing in the planet to suit the objectives of the story. For the most part, our two young humans are running (or as the title suggests, walking) away from fellow humans with bad intentions. Despite the foreign planet, we are only given a glimpse of what the local native creatures look like. Instead the focus remains on the humans and their self destructive and violent nature as an answer to everything. Here is where my main problem lies. The story seem to have been simplified to divide the humans into the good guys and the bad guys with all the rest of the people behaving like brainless cattle who would just follow their leaders blindly. The bad guys here being led by the always excellent Mads Mikkelsen whose looks alone would be enough top make you run away. Fans of singer Nick Jonas would instantly spot him out playing the role of the son to Mikkelsen’s character. However, his role was insignificant and kept pretty much in the background. The shallow characterisation and lack of details given to a new strange planet, is a disservice to an otherwise potentially interesting piece of escapist science fiction adventure.

The best thing about Chaos Walking is the performances of our main actors, They did amazingly well given the film’s lack of details and unimpressive approach. They present their characters as likeable which gets us interested to yearn for a good outcome for them. Overall I think the film could have been much better.