Chain of Fools

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

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

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.

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