Chaos, the 2005 straight to video film from writer/director Tony Giglio, casts Jason Statham and Wesley Snipes in a heist film cum mystery that, on paper at least, looked like a winner. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving.

When a bank robber calling himself Lorenz holds forty people hostage inside a building in downtown Seattle, it's time for suspended cop Quentin Connors to come out of hiding. For some reason, Lorenz will talk only to Connors and he refuses to deal with anyone else. Before you know it, the bank has blown up, Lorenz and his team have gone missing, and Connors is teaming up with a rookie cop named Shane Dekker (Ryan Philippe) to catch the bad guy and save the day. As the pair carry on their investigation, a game of cat and mouse plays out and they find themselves involved in a strange and very layered mystery involving a series of crimes based on the Chaos Theory.

The premise for the film is a sound one and the film moves along at a strong pace, from its exciting opening in which we see just why Connors was suspend to the twist ending where we learn that very little in the film was as it seemed. Why, then, does the film fail when it sounds like it should have worked and worked well at that? Clichés, and plenty of them. Does Connors get into a dispute with his ex-girlfriend, now involved with one of his rivals on the force? Does he carry a big chip on his shoulder because of his suspension but then jump at the chance to get back into action? Is Dekker on the force because his dad was a hero cop killed in the line of duty? Is there a chase scene where a vehicle barrels down an alley way only to see two men carry something in front of it? Does a cop commandeer a pedestrian motorbike to chase that bad guy down? The answer to all of these questions is, sadly, yes, and that hurts the film considerably.

To the movie's credit, the twist ending is a good one, though a few too many clues point in that direction towards the end of the film and the possibility of such a plan actually being carried out is slim to say the least. Unfortunately, the film follows the clever twist by rapping things up Silence Of The Lambs style with an airport based phone conversation that is pretty laughable.

Statham uses his screen presence to carry his scenes but his chemistry with Philippe (not a bad actor in his own right) is nil while Snipes' role is, despite prominent billing, really only a glorified cameo, his character's ties to Statham's again an obvious cliché. A few tense chase scenes and a remarkable bank explosion give the film some value as a mindless action film but unfortunately the film aspires to be much more than that and so it forces its uninspired plot down our throats leaving a pretty bad taste in our mouths. To Giglio's credit, he tries hard to craft a different breed of action movie, it's just a shame that this different film falls prey to the same old tired action movie plot devices.

Video:

Chaos arrives on DVD in an anamorphic 2.35.1 widescreen presentation that doesn't look nearly as good as a movie made this recently should. The image is murky and overly grainy and the colors are flat and muddy looking. Detail levels aren't terrible but neither are they particularly impressive. Edge enhancement and mild compression artifacts aren't overpowering but neither are they hard to spot while some minor print damage appears in the form of the odd speck or two. Unfortunately, the image has not been properly flagged for progressive scan and suffers from some heavy saw tooth artifacting.