Every thought spoken aloud, whether you want it or not: that is the governing rule of the frontier world Doug Liman builds in Chaos Walking, a 2021 science-fiction adventure starring Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland.
What is Chaos Walking about?
On an unexplored planet, a settlement of men lives with a strange affliction. Inner thoughts leak out of their heads as a visible, audible stream the townsfolk call the Noise, so nobody can keep a secret and nobody can find a moment of quiet. Into this place comes a stranger whose silence unsettles everyone, and the arrival sets two unlikely companions on the run across the badlands beyond the town. What follows is a chase through hostile terrain, with pursuers who can hear their quarry's fears before they see them, and a growing suspicion that the story the settlers tell about their own history does not add up. The film keeps its action moving while asking what privacy means in a world where nothing stays private.
About the cast
Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland are the leads, supported by Mads Mikkelsen, Demián Bichir, Cynthia Erivo, Nick Jonas, Ray McKinnon and Kurt Sutter. It is a large ensemble for a story that spends much of its running time with two people on the move, and the wider cast fills out both the settlement the companions leave behind and the pursuit that follows them into the wilderness.
Context & significance
Chaos Walking is a United States production released in 2021 and directed by Doug Liman. In K-Time's catalogue it sits at the crossroads of four genres: action, adventure, fantasy and science fiction. Its central conceit, a world where thought is involuntarily broadcast, belongs to a long tradition of science fiction that uses a single impossible rule to examine ordinary human behaviour, from secrecy and trust to the way a community polices what its members are allowed to say. At 109 minutes it is a compact film for its genre, spending little time on exposition and moving quickly into the chase that makes up the bulk of the story.
Watching Chaos Walking on Ktime
Chaos Walking is available on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so you can choose between hearing the film in Farsi or following the original English performances with Farsi text. This page is free to read; to stream the film you need to log in to a K-Time account. The whole experience, from browsing the catalogue to the playback controls, is presented in a Farsi interface built for Persian-speaking viewers living abroad.