Keanu Reeves Teamed Up With Morgan Freeman On This '90s Sci-Fi Movie That Bombed With Critics

Keanu Reeves has had a solid track record over the past decade, getting a high kill count while he's at it, as "John Wick." Long before that, and even before entering "The Matrix," the man known for using lots of guns experienced a few misfires. One slip up was in 1995 with "Johnny Mnemonic," which was then immediately followed by a movie that saw him talk a lot of science opposite Morgan Freeman.

Released in 1996, "Chain Reaction" was headlined by the two stars, along with Reeves' future "Constantine" co-star Rachel Weisz. The movie followed a group of scientists who discovered a new energy source that shady government forces tried to eliminate. Foiling their plans for giving the world a bright new future was "Succession" star Brian Cox, adding another powerhouse performer that this film should've thrived on. Unfortunately, things didn't pan out for the sci-fi conspiracy movie with critics or audiences.

Made on a budget of $50 million, Andrew Davis' "Chain Reaction" earned a paltry $60.2 million at the box office, and suffered scathing reviews from critics as well. Earning only 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, it turned out that the biggest issue for "Chain Reaction" was the confounding chain of events that takes place in the film that had even the biggest movie buffs flummoxed by what was onscreen.

A bold young scientist making a huge breakthrough isn't anything new in sci-fi (just ask Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) in David Cronenberg's "The Fly"). Sadly, that's precisely part of why "Chain Reaction" didn't spark success upon its release. Critics slammed the film for not only offering a by-the-numbers conspiracy tale, but also over-complicating things with its scientific babble.

The Houston Chronicle's Jeff Millar said, "The narrative is very complex, but what's on the screen is little more than generic, non-narrative-specific, guy-being-chased stuff." Roger Ebert said, "By movie's end, I'd seen some swell photography and witnessed some thrilling chase scenes, but when it came to understanding the movie, I didn't have a clue."

He wasn't the only one. Due to heavy rewrites, Keanu Reeves himself revealed in later years that the project he'd signed up for wasn't what ended up getting released. Initially, Reeves' character was married and had a child, burdened with internal struggles that quickly vanished. "And then all of a sudden, I turn into this 24-year-old machinist," he told UPI. "And I turned to Andrew Davis, and I said, 'What happened to the movie I said yes to? What happened to that script? Where did that go?' And he said, 'No, I got something better,' and so I just had to go with it." Thanks to Reeves' consistent charm and charisma, this sci-fi blunder didn't have a chain reaction on his career.