Chaos

Hideo Nakata, director of RINGU (1988), followed up his spooky international hit with this complex and compelling thriller in which a beautiful woman hires a handyman to kidnap her, with the hope of winning back her cheating husband's attention. But things soon begin to go awry when the amateur-kidnapper-for-hire returns to his hideout to find the 'captive' woman dead, and then receives a mysterious phone call instructing him to dispose of the body.

As the film gradually unfolds, we learn, via the use of various interesting storytelling techniques, that there is much more to his predicament than at first meets the eye.

With a choppy non-linear narrative that requires full attention from the viewer, Chaos is definitely not an easy film to follow (particular if you choose to watch with subtitles), but those who do make the effort to keep track of events will be rewarded with an effective and inventive slow-burner. With more twists and turns than a python doing the samba, this movie constantly surprises, and only a rather abrupt ending stops the film from being a truly 'great' experience.

If you're a not a fan of Nakata's supernatural work, don't let that put you off from seeing this intriguing movie; a different kettle of fish altogether, Chaos is well worth giving a go.

Chaos (1999) was an nice follow up to Ringu. This film's a nice change of pace. One day a rich man and his wife are eating lunch. She decides to step out to get some fresh air, hubby goes outside to meet her and she's gone! Befuddled, Hubby tries to call the police but is contacted by the kidnapper. During this time we're introduced to a divorced handy man. He meets a young lady who offers him some money if she does a job for him. He wants him to kidnap her. What seems like easy money gets this guy into a situation that's way over his head.

This film would have made Hitchcock pleased. It's filled with a lot of plot twists, betrayals and confusion. The direction by Nakata is excellent, he creates a sense of chaos that's extremely effective. If you like movies that spoon feed you information then this is not for you. However if you're a fan of mystery thrillers, you'll eat this one up.

Highly recommended.

If you liked "The Lion In Winter," "Blood Simple" and "Memento," I can recommend this one highly. It's an incredibly contorted mystery story full of doubles-crosses and stabbings-in-the-back -- the kind of movie that leaves you so bollixed up that until almost the final frame, you are asking what's happened to whom and why, and if any of it is even real. The kidnapping and killing may or may not have happened, and the reasons gets less and less clear as time goes on. At the very end they pull it all together so you finally get what really happened -- WITHOUT resorting to having a character sit down and explain it to you. It may well be that the viewer understands more of what's going on than any of the characters in the story. My only complaint is that the pace is just a leetle slow for my taste -- it gave me a few hair-tearing moments of "Dear Cod, are they ever going to finally explain what's going on here?" I found it very satisfying, and was not sorry I stayed up late to see the end.

This is an enjoyable puzzle of a movie by Hideo Nakata, the director of Ringu. What starts out as a simple kidnapping soon becomes a complex story told in a cut-up narrative style that can be hard to follow if you're not paying attention. Through the twists and turns you're given answers, and then more questions until everything is resolved, sort of. If you enjoy well-crafted, sophisticated films in the tradition of Hitchcock or Lynch I think you will enjoy this.

Japanese horrormeister Hideo Nakata took a break from his genre of choice to make this twisty, occasionally twisted, and highly effective thriller.

"Chaos" starts off seemingly with a nod to "High and Low" (1963) - an industrialist dealing with a kidnapping - but soon you realize this film worries not about complex moral ambiguities. Instead, "Chaos" has more in common with American film noir from the 1940s and '50s than anything by Kurosawa. Director Nakata and writer Hisashi Saito (adapting a novel by Shogo Utano) also adopt a Hitchcockian feel, borrowing rather generously from "Vertigo" (1958).

"Chaos" owes more to film noir in story than in style. We have the hoodwinked sap, manipulative femme fatale and rich husband, who might harbor his own secret. The performances are uniformly good, especially Miki Nakatani as the object of desire who knows exactly how to play the men in her life and does it to perfection.

This is a well-done, deceptive thriller that relies on a tightly wound plot to keep us guessing. What's gratifying is the characters seem to be on the verge of erupting into violence. There's always that sense of dread; we never know when something or someone will turn deadly. The film is smartly plotted, though there's one glaring plot point - involving the husband's sister - that isn't satisfactorily answered. In fact, I'm not quite sure why it was included.

But "Chaos" remains an intriguing film. To deceive us for as long as possible, because nothing is what it seems in this film, Nakata unravels his mystery in nonlinear fashion, never telling us when flashbacks are about to happen. Although this might confuse some viewers (though it shouldn't), the nonlinear structure isn't merely a gimmick. It works perfectly and, frankly, there's no other way this story could have been told as effectively. "Chaos" trusts its audience to keep up with the twists and turns - and there are many - and how refreshing that is.

Of course, because "Chaos" was a successful Japanese film and remaking newer Asian films is the rage in Hollywood, director Jonathan Glazer is remaking "Chaos," in the footsteps of two other remakes of Nakata films - "Ringu" (1998) and "Dark Water" (2002), which will be at your local multiplex early next year starring Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly and John C. Reilly. Although no official announcement has been made, it's perfectly clear Hollywood studios are now utterly devoid of original ideas and stories. Robert De Niro is to star in the "Chaos" remake, and as brilliant an actor as he is (though he has been phoning it in the last few years), I can't see how Glazer could possibly improve on the original.