Chain of Fools

i am an ardent fan of traktor... or at least fan of certain elements in traktor and was sadly disappointed by the film. the storyline was not the ingenious silliness one expects from traktor's work. i'd love to make some specific comments, but i began nodding out after jeff goldblum was left in the ex's apartment. sorry, but i cannot recommend this one... not even to my little brother.

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!

Recap: Kresk, struggling barber, recently divorced by his wife stumbles upon a secret when a gangster comes into his barbershop. This gangster, Avnet, was involved in a high profile theft last night involving three ancient Chinese coins. He thinks Kresk must die, fortunately fro Kresk Avnet stumbles and get Kresk's scissor in his neck. Now Kresk has a body to take care of. Unfortunately for Kresk, Kresk is not the brightest boy in town. And worse, neither is his friend Andy, full time scout, who he enlists for help. But as time goes, and things get worse, more and more people get involved, but Kresk is determined that those coins will change his life. For the better, he hopes.

Comments: An unusual comedy/crime movie handling a lot of different subplots that runs at the sides of each others with a lot of intersections. What makes this unusual and imaginative is that what happens in a subplot we are not currently following has an impact how the story goes at the next intersection. At the same time we get the full coverage in time with a frequent use of flashbacks and jumps in the timeline. Still, it was never any problem to follow.

The movie has a really big cast, and a lot of the names on the list are known. Goldblum delivers a solid performance as usual, Zahn is a great choice for Kresk. The best impression however I think I got from Elijah Wood who portrays a teen hit-man with finesse. I think it is the best performance from him I have ever seen. The director team Traktor has done a great work in their movie debut and I hope I will see more work from them like this one.

7/10

Robert Bollingsworth's dying words are "Where is the moose?" (or, possibly, "When will the moose come?"), which must be an inside joke for the Swedish audience from the two (Swedish) directors. Supposedly, the elderly Swedish king, Gustav V, (the present king's great grandfather) once fell asleep in church during a lengthy sermon. Suddenly, the king awoke, and believing he was on a moose hunt, he asked aloud "När kommer älgen?", which literally translates into "When does the moose come?". The phrase has been used e.g., by the Swedish comedians "Hasse & Tage", Hans Alfredsson and Tage Danielsson, in one of their stage productions, where Tage Danielsson played Gustav V.

Ok, before I begin, I'd like to say that I'm a fan of Elijah Wood and the fact that he's in it made me bought this movie. And surprisingly, I enjoyed the movie and all its characters instead of just Elijah Wood's.

The entire movie is actually based on a somewhat simple plot but there are so many people involved in it, and with all the flashbacks you can actually see how they're related to one another, which cracked me up.

The movie is funny in its own simple ways. I wouldn't label it as 'slapstick' immediately because obviously there's a plot clinging on to it and the movie follows that plot.

There were loads of funny moments. When Andy, the Timberscout (David Cross) began insulting Miss Cocoa (Orlando Jones) and when Boilingsworth (Tom Wilkinson) tripped while walking from his car to meet Avnet (Jeff Goldblum).

For reasons not related to my liking for Elijah Wood (hey dudes, they simply ARE funny), I most liked the parts when hitman Mikey (Elijah Wood) repeated to Kresk (Steve Zahn) "I didn't mean to brag, but do you know about Senator Dove..." when in fact... (uh, you'll have to watch the movie to find out). the part when he cried was kind of out of the blue and the snotty man looked so strange then.

The show is entertaining, but the video is probably not attractive enough to be picked up by non-fans of the cast. 7 stars