Chaos Theory

Movie
2008

Retro-Review

I was striking out in the new release section at Blockbuster (you remember Blockbuster, right) so I wandered into the main section looking for something, anything to bring home. I happened across a lonely DVD with Ryan Reynolds picture on it called Chaos Theory. I like Reynolds so I grabbed it thinking it might not suck and then completely forgot about it. I ended up taking it back to Blockbuster unwatched. Sometime later - same scenario - found me looking at the same DVD and thought, what the heck, I may even watch it this time. I did. What started as a movie pick out of sheer boredom turned out to be one of my favorite movies of all time - and no one has heard of it.

Chaos Theory peers into the life of an obsessively organized time efficiency expert whose life is thrown into pure chaos by a single act of misguided love by his wife. He is forced to examine the deeper meaning of love and forgiveness.

The movie begins with a wedding scene where Frank (Reynolds) catches his future son-in-law sneaking out the back and makes him stop long enough to hear his story about what it means to love.

The story takes us back to the day Frank and Susan get together and then fast forwards to a point in time when Frank is a successful time efficiency expert whose life and clock is ruled by his ever present index cards. His wife mistakenly moves the clock behind 10 minutes to give him a little breathing room and break his rigidity, but of course this sets off a series of cascading events as he misses the ferry boat that was take him into the city for his lecture on time management.

From this point Frank's life gets turned upside down as he learns things that would bring into question everything he thought he knew about his beautifully organized life. What sounds like a tragedy is downright hilarious. Reynolds does a great job transforming a character whose rigid devotion to the clock becomes a unpredictable rebel.

The role of Susan played by Emily Mortimer is convincingly angry/sad and contrite as the story evolves. Frank's best friend Buddy Endrow (Stuart Townsend) is motivated by his life long yearning for Susan as he moves in to try to pick up the pieces of Frank's abandoned life.

In the end the story is touching and lovely - and hilarious. I loved this movie.

The soundtrack is also really good, floating passively under well placed scenes of emotion and revelation. Several of the songs played by a group called the Damnwells fill-in the transformational scenes beautifully. The songs "Graceless" and "Tonight and Forever" will stick with you long after the final credits.

I'm not sure how or why this movie was missed. Ryan Reynolds had already been a well known movie star and should have given this fun and touching movie some credibility. Well, now you know - check it out!


5 of 5 stars


CW