FILM · 1996 · USA
Chain Reaction
55 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (55)
- #001
The cast could only complete a few shots per day while filming the ice hovercraft chase because of the unpleasant combination of cold weather and high speed.
- #002
The bridge scene in which Keanu Reeves is pursued by the Chicago Police Department, the FBI and Brian Cox's associates required roughly a week of night shoots, with temperatures ranging between five and twenty-six degrees below zero.
- #003
In his memoir, Brian Cox recalls that despite eight writers working on it (ultimately uncredited), much of the film was shot from what was called a "beats script," which defined the rhythm of the main story but little else. He describes a particular scene in which he and Morgan Freeman hurried down a tunnel and into an elevator: director Andrew Davis asked the two of them to improvise without written dialogue. Freeman, who had by then been on the film far longer than Cox, was fed up with the constant rewrites and story changes and refused. Cox quickly came up with a monologue and began singing when the camera unexpectedly followed them into the elevator. The scene was later reshot with scripted dialogue.
- #004
The huge explosion early in the film, caused by the failed cold fusion project, was shot using miniatures of an old, abandoned steel factory that served as both an interior and an exterior for the production.
- #005
Before filming began, Keanu Reeves had injured himself playing hockey in his native Canada. He hurt his neck and back, which caused him to gain weight and explains his appearance in the film.
- #006
The scene in which Keanu Reeves barely escapes on a motorcycle was shot mostly with blue screens and explosion effects added in post-production. In the live-action shots, Reeves rides a motorcycle attached to the back of a truck while a camera captured close-ups.
- #007
Nick Offerman was cast as Kenny's super building, but learned at the film's premiere that both of his scenes had been cut. It would have been one of his first films.
- #008
The aerial view of the particle accelerator at C-Systems Research, supposedly located in Leesberg, Virginia, is actually the APS (Advanced Photon Source) at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois.
- #009
Scenes shot at the Field Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry, both in Chicago and about five miles apart, were combined to suggest a (fictional) museum outside Washington, D.C. The action did not take place in Chicago.
- #010
It was shot almost entirely during the winter of 1995 and early 1996 in Andrew Davis's hometown of Chicago, where his other films Code of Silence (1985), Above the Law (1988), The Package (1989) and The Fugitive (1993) were also shot.
- #011
Mira Sorvino was originally cast as Dr. Lilly Sinclair but left the project to take a role in Beautiful Girls (1996).
- #012
The film's opening scenes were shot at the Inland Steel factory in East Chicago, Indiana.
- #013
This is the second Andrew Davis film in which Neil Flynn plays a police officer who tries to arrest the main characters but is shot by the real villain. The first was The Fugitive (1993).
- #014
The characters played by Fred Ward and Kevin Dunn in the film are generally based on the U.S. Marshals Sam Gerard and Cosmo Renfro (played by Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pantoliano) from Andrew Davis's The Fugitive (1993).
- #015
Two of the computer readouts are the Collective Bargaining readout from On Deadly Ground (1994).
- #016
The role of Lyman Collier was originally planned to be played by Tommy Lee Jones. Brian Cox was brought in instead.
- #017
The ramp Keanu Reeves descends during the explosion is located at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. The ramp is at the IPNS (Intense Pulsed Neutron Source) facility and can be seen in aerial photographs on the division's website.
- #018
Rachel Weisz plays visiting scientist Dr. Lilly Sinclair, a physicist working in the United States under an H1B visa who is fleeing agents of a secret organization that wants her knowledge and therefore wants her eliminated. She takes on nearly the same role in The Bourne Legacy (2012), playing visiting biochemist Dr. Marta Shearing, who works under a DOD H1B visa and flees a secret government agency that wants her eliminated for fear her knowledge could compromise the program she works for.
- #019
Several references are made to an "Ice Hovercraft," which is actually a hovercraft of the kind used in evergreen forests or swampy areas.
- #020
A scene in Chain Reaction is set in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Exteriors of the city's landmarks are shown, but the interior shots were filmed at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. Two scenes were shot there: one on the first floor of the domed Wisconsin Capitol building, and another in the building's Supreme Court chamber.
- #021
Elements of the original screenplay for "Dead Drop," written by Josh Friedman, in which Morgan Freeman's character frames Keanu Reeves's character for murder and industrial espionage, were retained through later rewrites along with the final shooting draft; Freeman plays more of a mysterious, mentor-like government agent, Reeves's character is still a scientist, and a Rachel Weisz character is added.
- #022
The chase scene at the observatory was filmed at Yerkes Observatory, located on a hill just above the university campus.
- #023
Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz share a scene in which both are clothed and she is in a bathtub. They would later share a scene in Constantine (2005) in which Rachel Weisz is clothed and in a bathtub.
- #024
An explosion large enough to destroy an entire abandoned steel mill could be especially devastating on Chicago's South Side. Although the mill and its grounds sit somewhat back from the roads, numerous small neighborhoods surround it, so such an explosion, particularly one occurring at night, would kill hundreds.
- #025
The lecture at the beginning of the film was shot in Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago.
- #026
The music in this film closely resembles that of Executive Decision. Given that Jerry Goldsmith worked on the music for both for nearly the same length of time, this is not surprising (both films were released in 1996).
- #027
"I'm your friend, Eddie" is the only line of dialogue in the film that originates from Josh Friedman's screenplay "Dead Drop."
- #028
The diagrams on the wall at the C Systems conference belong to the Zero Gradient Synchrotron (ZGS), a decommissioned particle accelerator whose main ring building sits beneath the hill that the ramp climbs. The scenes of the device just before the explosion were filmed in this building. The tunnels Lily and Eddie use to escape were the ZGS's underground passages.
- #029
Joseph F. Kosala and Ron Dean (Detectives Byczkowski and Zingaro) worked together on three other Andrew Davis films: Code of Silence (1985), Above the Law (1988) and The Fugitive (1993).
- #030
Keanu Reeves's and Rachel Weisz's characters wear nearly the same clothes from the beginning of the film to the end, which is unusual for a chase film.
- #031
Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman) smokes Davidoff cigars throughout the film. Since the bands are the same, it is impossible to tell whether they are Dominican or Cuban. During the FBI meeting at his home, Morgan Freeman takes a cigar from a cigar case (at about 55 minutes). It is a three-finger Churchill-length case made of brown leather by Savinelli.
- #032
The water tanks used in the film to serve as the "cold fusion project" resemble those used in hydrotherapy and massage therapy.
- #033
At the 78th Academy Awards, Morgan Freeman presented and handed the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Rachel Weisz.
- #034
The film reunites Keanu Reeves and Fred Ward eight years after The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988).
- #035
This film shares many cast members with another Andrew Davis film, The Fugitive (1993); both were shot (partly) in Chicago, IL: Joseph F. Kosala, Ron Dean, Turk Muller, Neil Flynn, Allen Hamilton, Joan Kohn, Joe Guastaferro, Ken Moreno, Eddie Bo Smith, Jr., Danny Goldring, Michael Skewes, John Lee Davenport, Afram Bill Williams, Ann Whitney, Pam Zekman, Juan Ramírez, Miguel Nino, John Drummond, Gene Barge, Dick Cusack and Nicholas Kusenko. Many play similar roles in both films, most notably the two detectives (Joseph F. Kosala and Ron Dean) and Neil Flynn, who plays a law enforcement officer in both films and is shot in both.
- #036
During Dr. Barkley's speech at the very beginning of the film, a Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion Map hangs behind him.
- #037
Some scenes were filmed in the same location as Damien: Omen II (1978).
- #038
At the end of the film, after the credits: underground, a semi-nuclear explosion collapses the entire facility.
- #039
James Newton Howard was initially set to score the film, but scheduling conflicts made him unavailable.
- #040
The public phone call made just before the ice vehicle chase was filmed on the campus of George Williams (now Aurora) College.
- #041
Yerkes Observatory is located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, overlooking Lake Geneva. There is no university there. Yerkes was part of the University of Chicago, a historic landmark and site for the development of the Big Bang theory on the evolution of the universe.
- #042
Morgan Freeman and Brian Cox share the same birthday, June 1. They later appeared together in Kiss the Girls (1997).
- #043
This is the only known film in which Keanu Reeves punches his own helmet.
- #044
This was director Andrew Davis's first and only collaboration with Oscar-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith, who was hired by producer Richard D. Zanuck, who knew him personally from his time working at Twentieth Century-Fox, and who considered him a perfect choice for the film because Davis's regular composer, James Newton Howard, had too many projects on his schedule.
- #045
The film has many similarities to The Fugitive, which Andrew Davis also directed, so Twentieth Century-Fox hired him in the hope of catching lightning in a bottle twice. The scenes resembling The Fugitive include: after the project, the murder of Professor Alistair succeeds and Eddie is accused, just as Dr. Richard Kimble was accused of murdering his wife. The laboratory blown up along with ten blocks of Chicago is bigger than the Bus/Train Wreck that forces Kimble and Copeland to flee the wreckage. Eddie barely survives thanks to his motorcycle barely escaping. Eddie and Lily's love for each other was hinted at early in the film, but it resembles a subplot that was cut short in terms of time and story, like that of Dr. Richard Kimble and Dr. Anne Eastman (played by Julianne Moore), who eventually helps Kimble and falls in love with him after helping the child with the broken ribs she misdiagnosed. The main villain, Lyman Collier, turns out to be a secret holding company trying to control and take over free energy based on a water hydrogen source, and in this film it was the medical holding company trying to sell a useless drug called Prevacid that caused test subjects to die from unhealthy livers, and the data was falsified by Dr. Charles Nichols, who worked with Devlin-MacGregor and framed Kimble because he knew the truth about what he was doing to the test subjects. The Draw Bridge chase in Chicago resembles part of the Storm Drain chase, where Kimble dives into the waterfall and Eddie barely escapes while hanging from the suspension bridge and is slowly lowered down, giving him a chance to escape while the assassins think he died when they jumped into the river. The end of the Ice Chase sequence in Wisconsin ends with Eddie and Lily escaping from the cold icy water, just as Kimble does in the cold freezing water after jumping from the storm drain. The Ice Chase resembles the Ambulance chase just before the storm drain scene in The Fugitive, which in this film ends with Eddie and Lily going to a nearby farmhouse in the distance. The meeting with Eddie, Lily and Shannon at the museum resembles Kimble's close encounter with Sam Girard at Chicago Prison, and he barely escapes just as Eddie does from the assassins pursuing him while Lily is captured. Eddie's confrontation with Collier at C Systems is the same as Kimble's confrontation with Charles Nichols at the Congress in the Chicago hotel about the facts of the Prevacid research. Fred Ward and Kevin Dunn's characters, Leon and Doyle, are almost exactly like Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pantoliano's Sam Girard and Cosmo Renfro in The Fugitive; both Ward and Dunn are eventually convinced that Keanu Reeves's character is innocent and begin to piece together the reasons they think they were framed. Eddie and Lily receiving financial help from Paul is the same as Charles Nichols giving Richard Kimble money to survive and escape in The Fugitive. The ending, in which Eddie and Lily leave in a helicopter with the FBI, resembles Sam Girard boarding away from the crime scene with the completely innocent Richard Kimble, smiling as Leon is proven right that Eddie is innocent. The film takes place during the winter months, just as The Fugitive did.
- #046
It is one of three Morgan Freeman films scored by Jerry Goldsmith; the others were Along Came a Spider (2001) and The Sum of All Fears (2002). This is the only collaboration among the three that was a 20th Century Fox film; the other two were Paramount Pictures films.
- #047
The film features many actors who had previously worked with director Andrew Davis, including Joanna Cassidy, Chelcie Ross, Danny Goldring, Eddie Bo Smith, Johnny Lee Davenport, Joseph Kosala and Ron Dean.
- #048
The film had the same $50 million budget as Andrew Davis's previous directing effort, Steal Big, Steal Little, which also had a $50 million budget for Savoy Pictures and performed poorly, causing the studio to go bankrupt, while this film recouped only half of its budget.
- #049
The film's cast includes two Oscar winners: Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz; and two Oscar nominees: Michael Shannon and Mike Gray.
- #050
The company owned by Lyman Collier is called C-Systems, a privately funded institution monitored by the US Government, and Shannon was therefore close to Collier because he was sent by the CIA, to infiltrate Collier or gain his favor, knowing that Alistair would steal his project to turn water into a free and viable energy source for the whole world through hydrogen. This idea was also to be "stolen" as part of the script of "The Saint," starring Val Kilmer, which was also to be released in 1996 but was pushed back due to extensive reshoots, including the film's ending.
- #051
The film has many similarities to The Fugitive, which director Andrew Davis was also involved in, but it does not have the same production crew as that film, because many people, including cinematographer Michael Chapman, composer James Newton Howard and production designer Dennis Washington, were unavailable to work on this film and were replaced by Frank Tidy, Maher Ahmed and Jerry Goldsmith.
- #052
Lyman Collier's C Systems operations base is located outside Langley, Virginia, and that is how Eddie found out how to get there, using the license plate he tracked from the computer in the police car.
- #053
Shannon was always by Eddie's side, but because of his hypocritical nature he could not explain Alistair's murder and the laboratory explosion, nor that Lily was innocent.
- #054
Along with eight uncredited writers, The Fugitive co-writer David N. Twohy can be presumed to be among them, since the film has many similarities to that film overall and Twentieth Century-Fox hoped to earn big box office returns like that film.
- #055
The film features Morgan Freeman playing a character named Paul Shannon, and actor Michael Shannon in an early role as a flower delivery driver.
Continue through the archive
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- IMDb IMDb kaydı
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work