Rent Chaos Walking (2021)
2.8 of 5 from 350 ratings
1h 45min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- In the not too distant future, Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) discovers a mysterious girl named Viola (Daisy Ridley). She has crash-landed on his planet, where the women have disappeared and the men are afflicted by "The Noise", a force that puts all their thoughts on display. In this dangerous landscape, Viola's life is threatened and, to protect her, Todd must discover his inner power and unlock the planet's dark secret sin this thrilling action-adventure based on the best-selling novel 'The Knife of Never Letting Go'.
- Actors:
- Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Demián Bichir, David Oyelowo, Kurt Sutter, Cynthia Erivo, Bethany Anne Lind, Mads Mikkelsen, Nick Jonas, Ray McKinnon, Vincent Leclerc, Blane Crockarell, François Gauthier, Tyrone Benskin, Frank Fontaine, Don Jordan, Patrick Garrow, Mylène Dinh-Robic, Julian Richings, Michael Dyson
- Directors:
- Doug Liman
- Producers:
- Doug Davison, Allison Shearmur, Erwin Stoff, Alison Winter
- Writers:
- Patrick Ness, Christopher D. Ford
- Aka:
- The Knife of Never Letting Go
- Studio:
- Lionsgate Films
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Collections:
- 2021, CinemaParadiso.co.uk Through Time
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 31/05/2021
- Run Time:
- 109 minutes
- Languages:
- English Audio Description, English Dolby Atmos
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.39:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Audio Commentary with Director Doug Liman, Producer Alison Winter and Editor Doc Crotzer
- A Director's Noise
- Inner Thoughts with Patrick Ness
- The Source of the Silence
- Citizens of Prentisstown
- The Music of 'Chaos Walking'
- Deleted Scenes with Optional Audio Commentary
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 31/05/2021
- Run Time:
- 109 minutes
- Languages:
- English Audio Description, English Dolby Atmos, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing, Spanish
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.39:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Audio Commentary with Director Doug Liman, Producer Alison Winter and Editor Doc Crotzer
- A Director's Noise
- Inner Thoughts with Patrick Ness
- The Source of the Silence
- Citizens of Prentisstown
- The Music of 'Chaos Walking'
- Deleted Scenes with Optional Audio Commentary
- Establishing Shot with Ben Seresin
More like Chaos Walking
Reviews (5) of Chaos Walking
Laughable mess - Chaos Walking review by Alphaville
In a future settlement on a distant planet all the women have been killed off by the local species (The Spackle), leaving the men to die out. But hang on a minute, there’s another settlement with women just through the woods! Don’t laugh. Also, the men (but not the women) can hear each other’s thoughts and see them as wavy lines called The Noise. Don’t laugh. Then Daisy Ridley arrives by spaceship and finds a motorbike that enables her to be chased by men on horseback. Okay, you can laugh at that one. She and another Young Adult (Tom Holland) must now go on a journey through the woods to Farbranch so that they can bicker and get to know each other. Don’t yawn.
All this is based on a children’s novel that one hopes worked better on the page because the film is a complete mess. More interesting is a very revealing Making Of on the DVD Extras. Doug Liman, normally a reliable director, had no working script, had no idea how to tackle the subject matter and seemed to make everything up as he went along. It shows.
8 out of 10 members found this review helpful.
Laughable, Tedious, pc Sci-Story made according to new #MeToo rules - Chaos Walking review by PV
The only thing that amazed me about this film is how all the actors in it manage to keep a straight face while speaking their absurd lines.
The wonderful Mads Mikkelsen phones it in no doubt thinking of the pay cheque. Tom Holland is clear eye candy for the expected teen audience, no doubt - used as much as any starlet of old Hollywood was. Apparently, that hypocrisy is just fine in the new woke world of metoo.
This is based on highly acclaimed YA books by Patrick Ness - a massively over-rated author and darling of the pc publishing scene. But the whole concept of the plot is sexist - against men. Pure misandry - claiming what this story claims. No spoilers. But if you could not read someone's thoughts, is it realistic to expect you would murder them all? All the fault or the book not the film - as are the 'Spackle'. What a limp name for an 'alien' species. Sounds Spangles, the kids; sweets. Maybe Patrick Ness was eating one and his genius imagination came up with it. No wonder the book won awards eh?
This film is confusing, silly, illogical and ticks all the pc boxes - if #MeToo had made a sci-fi movie, it'd look like this mess.
It cost $100 million to make and made $25 million only, so a massive flop. It had a script from 2011 rewritten multiple times with poor test screenings leading to more rewrites and shoots. Just so people know what a mess to expect.
I am only giving this 2 stars not 1 because the special effects of the 'noise' are done well, and the soundtrack music is decent so 1.5 stars rounded up. Not good.
2 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
A Complete Mess - Chaos Walking review by GI
A huge misjudged mess of a film. There's a lot of running and jumping in there that just distracts from the narrative that fails to exploit its own set up, which could have been very interesting. No wonder that the film was delayed and plagued with reshoots so it's anyone's guess what it looked like in its early edits. Anyway this science fiction story is set on a distant planet in the 23rd century. It's been colonised by humans many years ago who now live in a sort of 19th century frontier type existence and in one settlement only the men survive with the women mysteriously gone. The boss is a controlling bully (Mads Mikkelsen) who claims the women were all killed by the nasty indigenous aliens during a war. The strangest phenomenon of the planet is that all the men's thoughts can be seen and heard by everyone else, which they call the 'noise'. The women were not afflicted with this. When Viola (Daisy Ridley) crash lands in her scout ship she is found by Todd (Tom Holland), whose sexual yearnings are awakened but he has to protect her from the boss who covets the mothership he knows will eventually arrive for her. So they go on the run, hence the running etc through the woods chased by men on horses. There's a few special effects thrown in but not nearly enough and we're left with a basic story that throws in some religious craziness courtesy of a preacher (David Oyelowo) and the predictable yet scrappy finale. It's dull with a few interesting visuals and a film that will be quickly forgotten.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
Chaos Walking (aka The Knife of Never Letting Go) review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
Based on a YA novel, Chaos Walking at least has an interesting edge to explore in the exhausted subgenre of Young Adult Dystopian tales. The colonization of a new world for mankind occurs in waves, where the first wave has settled as colonists with a pioneering edge. The oddest thing about the planet is that all the men have their thoughts materialize as sight and sound with some mysterious force called The Noise. That’s a pretty interesting idea but such a film only manages to scrape the bare minimum of this rather interesting scenario.
On the planet, we follow Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland), a young man who has only ever known life on this new world. Having grown up with the Noise, he struggles to maintain it. Others have been able to master it to a certain degree, where the mayor (Mads Mikkelsen) has managed to focus his energies on hiding his thoughts and depicting illusions. Todd finds himself easily distracted as an unsure young adult, desperate to maintain his noise by repeating the words “I am Todd Hewitt.” His farm life does little to shake this uneasiness.
The planet has just received an arrival as a space shuttle crash lands in Todd’s territory. The only survivor is Viola (Daisy Ridley), a young woman who finds herself perplexed and frightened by an all-male community with transparent thoughts. Given that Todd has never seen a woman before, he’s overwhelmed with emotions and unsure how to respond. He’s also not sure who to trust when the mayor wants to keep her contained for undisclosed reasons.
Todd’s adventure to keep Viola safe finds him struggling to comprehend the world he occupies and the identity of being a man. It’s an intriguing aspect that is worth exploring, tapping more into the fears that young men have about growing up and trying to prove themself. Todd’s Noise constantly finds him seeking ways to show off to others that he is more of a man than a boy. It’s just a shame that there isn’t a whole lot more to his character besides seeking truth and worth through pathos most routine. The same goes for Viola who finds herself as more of a basic audience surrogate than someone with an arc.
The setting is at least quite pleasing. The new world is treated with a pioneering edge, where villages center around old-fashioned agricultural methods, horseback travel, and hunting with rifles and knives. There’s a great western setting to this swampy planet of fields, rivers, and forests. It’s a location that also looks good when posed next to down starships that enter and crash on the planet.
The concept of the Noise, however, feels as though there’s whole lore more worth exploring. Consider the Priest of Todd’s collective, a man who is conflicted by his own sins that his Noise seems to only speak of religious anger. A lot of the thoughts of the men communicated by the Noise are also rather base. They ask basic questions, make predictable reactions, and dream about baseball. It just seems like this would be an ample opportunity to display how men have thoughts that don’t about as easily come about in verbal conversations.
Chaos Walking really only feels like it’s a fraction of the YA dystopian tale it could have been. The concept is solid but the story spends so much time meandering around lesser moments that hardly make the setting any more interesting than on its basic levels. If only such a picture could see through its own Noise to present more clearer than a standard adventure of Holland and Ridley.