Chain of Fools

This is basically a "laugh at the losers" episode flick in the vein of "Short Cuts", without the pretension and with a healthy dose of Quentin Tarantino thrown in for good measure (sans the nastiness and macho violence.) Chain of Fools boasts the essential (for this type of movie) array of crooks and oddballs; from Jeff Goldblum's psychopathic rent-a-thief character to Elijah Wood's adolescent aspiring hitman.

The film is uneven, which is probably a result of the relative inexperience of the director(s). There are several scenes that just feel pointless, and the Bollingsworth character could have used a little polishing, but on the whole the movie is thoroughly enjoyable. Steve Zahn is great as the loser protagonist, Elijah Wood shines as the hitman wannabe, Jeff Goldblum turns in a solid performance and sexy Salma Hayek once again demonstrates she can do a lot more than just look pretty and dance with snakes.

Chain of Fools is no Pulp Fiction, but it has got an endearing quality all of its own. If Tarantino and the Coen brothers were to do a movie together I imagine you would get something a lot like this.

I give it 7/10, where Pulp Fiction is a 10/10 and The Big Lebowski is a 9/10.

I found this movie 4 years ago on Italian pay-TV, it was very less advertised and I've seen it only because that night there wasn't nothing apart it, and it was with famous actors like Steve Zahn and Salma Hayek. And when it started, I read the others actors of the cast! One name better than the previous: Jeff Goldblum, Elijah Wood, Orlando Jones, Tom Wilkinson, David Cross. This is a good point to start watching a unknown movie: discover a beautiful cast. Then, the movie, obviously. I love black comedy and generally all the movie with a lot of different characters which want the same thing(s), like Snatch, Big Trouble… And this one is absolutely the best. It's very funny, which is a very hard thing to find nowadays, few times banal, and it has a tremendous pace (in 1 hour and 35 minutes happens everything you can imagine). Moreover the plot begin almost at the end of the history, and then it's a flashback followed by another flashback, and so for all the actors, but, that is the best thing about this movie, it's never really hard to figure out and, although it is complex, it's easy to rebuild the history, which is globally believable. It's quite clean (not like the majority of black comedies), unfortunately it has a large number of dirty words (in the Italian version I've counted more of 70 of them), but they are proportionate at the characters. So, isn't a deep movie to think about something, it's the better way to relax yourself sometimes. Discover it, because isn't famous at all!

The movie opens on March 9 in Sweden. The team behind the movie, Traktor, are Swedish and therefore the world premiere is in Sweden. The celebrity premiere, yes there are such in Sweden too, was tonight at 7PM, and Traktor was presenting the movie. Jeff Goldblum should have been at the gala, but had to be in NYC to shoot a new film. He said hello in a very special way, with a short recording just for the gala audience, where he was doing jokes, singing "drinking songs" and wishing he had some Swedish Herring.

Chain of Fools is Traktor's first movie. They have done tons of commercials, but never a movie. Chain of Fools is their first stab at the silver screen - and man, what a good way to become immortal.

Steve Zahn is down on his luck, well, a loser. He is doing nothing, just being a loser... but by accident he get into both this and that. The movie is smart and moves from one thing to another and back again. The way the story is described and played in the movie, is similar to "Pulp Fiction", "O'Brother", "Numbers" and "True Romance". It's a blend, but you will feel right at home if you enjoyed those flicks. A dark, whacky and sarcastic humor poors out of the film.

Bottom line, I highly recommend this movie if you are into the earlier mentioned - even though the concept doesn't feel as fresh any more.

This started off a little slow, but quickly accelerated to a very quick pace. It went so fast for the last two thirds of the movie that you really had to pay attention to get everything. The twists are great, and incredibly funny. The plot is pretty good, not brilliant but allows for some very funny twists, and some unbelievably funny, but fairly unlikely, very complicated, situations that will make you laugh for several minutes without stopping for a breath, provided that you like black humor. The actors all do pretty good jobs, even Elijah Wood, who I normally hate with a passion, pulled off an entertaining performance. There weren't really any of the actors I was heavily disappointed by. All of the characters were funny, in their own, twisted sort of way, most of them are either caricatures or stereotypes, but they work really well together. The humor was great, most of the time, though some of the jokes fell flat, but most of it was a treat for fans of black comedy(like me). The sparse number of action scenes there was, were really great. The movie has a very good fast pace throughout most of the movie, there was hardly any moment where I was bored. The movie has some scenes that take place on a non-linear timeline, especially in the beginning, but the moment these are over, the film finds a better pace. This is not to say that these scenes were bad, in fact I find them to be a great start to the film. Overall, the movie was quite good, but some of the humor seemed to be more there to shock than to amuse, some of it did seem over the top. It could have been better, had the humor been more balanced and had more of the characters been believable and likable. In the end, the movie has some great laughs, but that's about it. It's easily forgettable. I recommend this to pretty much any fan of black comedy. It's not the best, but it's a pretty good one. If you're not easily offended, and you like black humor, it's worth checking out. 7/10

Ok, well, this wasn't a masterpiece or a greater work of art. But it sure was a very funny movie. A movie, which, given the right release, could have been a hit. It's a good script, a very hilarious one. The premise is nothing new. Just the story of a normal guy who, agains't his own will, get thrown into a bunch of impossible situations. I'll give this movie a 7. A perfect movie to watch with a bunch of friends. The only problem is finding it.