Chaos Walking (2021)

Chaos Walking (2021)

5/10

Starring

Daisy Ridley

Tom Holland

Mads Mikkelsen

Demián Bichir

 

Directed by Doug Liman

 

The movie, for me, is okay, but it blew the potential of being an excellent film. Bad pacing, weak character development, a lot of questions left unanswered, and an adventure that starts out good but becomes tiresome as it wears on.

I finished the movie wondering why the whole “Noise” thing was not fully developed and given more explanation. It seems some people are better at using it than others. Why is that? I guess it’s like how some people can draw and others can’t. Then we’re made to believe that the planet is inhabited by alien species, but that string is left dangling.

I haven’t read the book the movie is based on, but I want to believe the writer did a better job putting things together than this movie.

The movie had a knack for boasting about confrontations, but when it came to actually delivering on them, it just shied away. Performance-wise, Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland did very well.

The plot starts in the far future of 2257. Earth is not as it should be, and humans have left the planet seeking refuge elsewhere. The planet we’re on introduces us to Todd (Tom Holland). We see that he has the ability to read the thoughts of his dog, and we can see his thoughts too. Soon, we learn that the other men in the town he lives in can read each other’s thoughts, but Todd seems to be struggling to cage his.

We meet the mayor of the colony, who seems to have mastered how to keep his thoughts caged, and somehow, we see that he has also learned how to control people. The whole “men being able to read and see each other’s thoughts” is called Noise, something they found happened to them when they got to this planet.

Through Todd, we learn that the colony has no women—all the women were killed by the alien species who were native to that planet. We also discover that, other than men and the animals, you cannot read the thoughts of women.

Todd is made to believe that his colony of just men is the only one that exists (which is not true) and that humans (male or female) don’t exist elsewhere. Things change when we see a spaceship land on the planet—the crash was catastrophic, and only a woman survived, named Viola (Daisy Ridley). Todd was the first person to discover her, and he told the mayor. The mayor captured her and questioned her to know if another ship was coming. He seems to have other plans for the coming ship, and we soon discover that he has been lying to the young ones about what really happened on the planet they’re on.

Todd soon gets the urge that Viola is in trouble, and he immediately wants to help her escape. Soon, with the help of his adopted parents, they’re both on the run from the men of their colony.

The movie is not recommended. It’s okay, and nothing more.

It is based on The Knife of Never Letting Go from the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness.