New Action Film Hinges on H2 Power

Andrew Davis, director of The Fugitive, teams up with actors Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman for “the ultimate in nonstop thrills and high-tech espionage” in Chain Reaction. The film, which opened 2 August 1996, features a hydrogen-based energy technology still in the research stage in real life.

In the movie, machinist Eddie Kasalivich (Reeves) is a member of a team of visionary research scientists who have discovered the key to a cheap, pollution-free energy—hydrogen, through a process called sonoluminescence. When the team’s leader is assassinated and the laboratory is destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion, Kasalivich, along with two top aides—physicists Lu Chen and Lily Sinclair—are framed for the murder.

PHOTO OF ACTORS RACHEL WEISZ AND KEANU REEVES FROM MOVIE CHAIN REACTION

Two research scientists—played by actors Rachel Weisz and Keanu Reeves, right—are forced to flee for their lives after perfecting a clean, hydrogen-based energy technology in the new action film “Chain Reaction.”

With the help of Paul Shannon (Freeman), Eddie’s mentor and the research project’s backer, Eddie and Lily go on the run. With half-a-dozen federal agencies pursuing them across country, they seek to discover who is behind the conspiracy. With nothing as it seems, Eddie and Lily find themselves trapped in an underworld of technological espionage where neither they nor their discovery are meant to survive.

Although the movie’s plot of technological espionage is implausible, the film has had the positive effect of generating interest in hydrogen. The NHA has countered some of the technical inaccuracies in the film on its Web page; see http://www.ttcorp.com/nha/chainrea.htm for details.

©1996. All Rights Reserved. A Publication of the National Hydrogen Association.
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