Elijah Wood - The Chain of Fools

Elijah Wood

Performer for Our Time

CHAIN OF FOOLS
(2000)

EJW's Performance

Spoiler Alert

Elijah Wood as "Mikey"

Edward C. Patterson, site owner

Annie Graham, copy editor

Elijah Wood’s portrayal of Mikey in Chain of Fools (2000) showcased the 19-year-old actor as one of Hollywood’s most intelligent members, one that could take a supporting role and steal every one of his scenes. He had done this before in other films—Oliver Twist for example. But, the role of Mikey is not essential to this circuitous plot line—it is tangential; yet, it becomes, in Elijah’s hands central to the dark comedy. Not the star with Top Billing, Elijah Wood manages to nail his characterization like a gymnast dismounting from the parallel bars with a 10-10 landing.

When we first encounter Mikey, he is coming down the hallway of Avnet's apartment house just as a hitman should—stealthily, warily and covering himself with a silencer at the ready. But the initial joke establishes the comedy of his role. He’s a 19-year-old actor playing a 17-year-old hit man. His face is reminiscent of Sal Mineo’s, punky, but with those Elijah Wood baby blues clearly signalling that we are playing against type here. The humor is captured in Elijah’s seriousness, his steel force intensity, like Hamlet meeting the ghost at Elsinore. In fact, much of Elijah’s performance is Shakespearean—not the Hamlet of North (to be or—line, line), but the brooding isolation of the true Hamlet combined (later) with the whimsy of Dogberry. In addition, when we first see Elijah Wood as Mikey, he is perhaps his most handsome on screen to date (2000). He looks more like the Elijah of the modeling world, projecting product from his pores and clothing. So, with breathtaking beauty, steel intensity and a few lines of dialog, Elijah establishes Mikey more clearly than any other character in the film up to that time. Of course, his phone call to Bollingsworth is a perfect match as Tom Wilkinson is the other magical actor in the film, with his Jeeves accent and undertow of snobbery. It is funny that Elijah’s first lines are finished underwater (the cell phone thrown in the pool, his voice gurgling like Flipper at his worst).

Mikey’s second appearance is a tour de force—his meeting with Bollingsworth in the restaurant. Elijah is cool, professional and focused. His diction is pointed even to the ending of each consonant clearly. All this adds to comic effect, as what we sense and hear does not match the baby faced punk that asks, "Is this chair being used?" to another diner, who gives a smart-ass answer. "Does it look like it’s being used," Mikey says. "That’s a good one." Smiles then bursts the chair over the diner’s head. He retrieves another chair, sits and tells Bollingsworth, "I got another chair."

Mikey deals with Bollingsworth by referring to his main credential, and lucky for us, the script shows instead of tells. "Do you remember Senator Dove?" The fashback to the Senator’s hotel room is classic and Elijah plays Mikey as a holy terror, kicking in the door, slapping the Senator, mashing his head into the door, hitting him over the head with a bottle, then rolling him off the balcony ledge. It impresses Bollingsworth. Elijah concludes the "hit for hire" scene coolly. "Well, it’s your lucky day. I’m not busy this afternoon."

Mikey is shown arriving at Avnet’s apartment, a different series of shots, more from his POV. It is a great tie off to the character leaving him calling Bollingsworth, with a full circle of flashbacks that return the story line to Kresk. One small continuity issue (director's fault, although how Elijah allowed it is beyond me). When Mikey first enters the apartment in his initial scene, he kicks Miss Cocoa. When we return to the shot a second time, he merely tousles her with his foot. Now, maybe this was a subliminal set up to see multiple flashbacks of the Senator Dove sequence; but I think it is more a continuity slip. Fortunately, only watching the film multiple times makes this evident.

The second "hit for hire" scene—Kresk hiring Mikey, is the best scene in the film. Here, Elijah, having established the character, develops him. A lesser actor would have continued the same schtick, scene after scene. In fact, as great as all the actors are in this film, most of them do not develop their characters beyond their initial cliches. Elijah Wood does it. He sits absolutely steel eyed, in fact, he reminds me of the Stephen King phrase when describing Roland de Chain or Clint Eastwood as men of steel with bombardier blue eyes—cold in their sockets, yet compelling—windows to the character they portray. Here Elijah sits with his bombardier eyes and says, "You lookin’ for me?" He does not blink, a powerful talent in his arsenal of facial expressions used well as Mikey Carver in The Ice Storm and more famously in the upcoming Return of the King, wrapped in Shelob’s web trappings. Also, he drops the perfect diction of the previous scene—matching Kresk (the client) as oppose to the foil of Bollingsworth. Elijah answers Kresk’s inquiries with "We don’t like to be called hired killers" followed shortly by "Do you remember Senator Dove?" The second fashback to the Senator Dove assassination is more forceful and violent; yet, smarter. A fine vase thrown and smashed in the first sequence, is comically caught, examined, quickly appraised and set aside in the second, Mikey opting to smash a cheap bottle instead. Elijah uses a series of martial arts kicks not to be seen again until he plays Kevin in Sin City. In this retelling, Mikey picks Senator Dove over his head (a physical unlikelihood) and throws him off the balcony like a shot put. In the end, Mikey strides away without one hair out of place.

"You killed Senator Dove?" Kresk asks. "I voted for him. He was a nice guy."

"Hey," Mikey says, "I liked him too. I would have voted for him if I were old enough."

Having deepened Mikey as a menace, Elijah now using his considerable silent acting skills, changes the character believably into the baby boy we all thought he was when we first encountered him. He made us suspend our disbelief; then, when we least expect it, he lets us know we’re the biggest fools in the chain. This transformation starts when he hears Bollingsworth’s name. His eyes swim, followed by denial when Kresk asks if he knows Bollingsworth. Elijah Wood’s eyes have their own method of telling a story. This deepens when he realizes that Bollingsworth tried to commit suicide.

"Suicide bothers me. My mom and dad killed themselves."

This connects him to Kresk, whose father killed himself. As the dialog continues, Elijah’s voice gets softer, higher and sloppy. Then, he does what no one expects. He bursts into tears. The moment catches you so off-guard you can either laugh or cry. But, we choose to laugh—mostly at ourselves for believing that Mikey was really as hard-ass as Elijah made us think. Every movie has an iconic moment (some more than one). Elijah Wood’s crying like a little girl sequence is this film’s iconic moment—the first thing to come to mind when remembering the whole film. The comedy builds as Kresk tries to console him and other people (in the library) react. Finally, Elijah, head down and sobbing says (in a high pitch baby’s whine) "I’ll make the hit." It is just so pee-in-your-pants funny.

In the hit on Bollingsworth (at least the first attempt), Elijah continues to develop the character, this time along Hamlet lines—brooding and adrift with no purpose but to fulfill the destiny of his role. He delivers a soliloquy over the comatose Bollingsworth revealing the honesty of his heart. Now we see snippets of Frodo Baggins, first when Miss Cocoa interrupts him. "He meant a lot to you, sugar," she/he says. Elijah turns to her and we see the sweet innocent gaze of Frodo at the Gray Havens. Then, when he admits (in yet another flashback) that he did not assassinate Senator Dove, we see the young cub bellhop delivering room service trying to stop the Senator from leaping off the balcony. When the senator jumps, Elijah screams the word NO exactly as he had a few months before in The Fellowship of the Ring, in Moria when Gandalf falls into shadow. This flashback, comic as it is, seriously brings the hard-ass Mikey into conflict with the innocent orphan trying to eke out a living as a "hired-killer," much like the situation Elijah portrays in Oliver Twist as Jack Dawkins—a pickpocket due to circumstance’s force.

Of course, before this becomes too serious, Mikey is interrupted by the second hitman adding another level of farce to this farcical film. Elijah plays the stoic when he resigns to die and utters the echo line, "Goodbye cruel world." The hospital shoot out and chase scene showcases Elijah’s Monkey flexibility and allows him to do a maneuver he has become famous for among his fans—the Elijah Wood slip, where he turns a corner and does a prat fall, but only as he can. (It’s shorter than the one he took in The Faculty at poolside, but just as effective). The chase allows him to fire the gun. Elijah has only fired a gun three times in his films. This was the first time. He would do it again in Ash Wednesday and in All I Want/Try Seventeen.

Elijah does not stop there. Next we see him sitting on the back of the commode in Kresk’s bathroom surprising the main star as he searches for a condom. This scene requires excellent comic timing; and both Elijah Wood and Steve Zahn provide that. Mikey has been changed in our eyes, so Elijah softens him to near resolution.

"Just checkin’ in," he says like the Cheshire cat appearing in frame quite unexpectedly. Mikey has figured out Kresk’s plan. And why not. Elijah has made him the most intelligent character in the plot.

"Shit man," he says, "I like the way you work. You look like an innocent barber, but really you’re a bad ass."

Suddenly, his face loses its bombardier look. It becomes lemur-like, sparkling like it does in his many publicity shots and autograph signings.

"I like you," he says. "Hey, wanna go see a show? I can get tickets half-price."

He also turns sage. "You don't want to get involved with the person who’s trying to capture you." Then, back to "Let’s go to Cats. It’s a great show. Do you want to go out for a malted?"

Of course, Kresk is trying to get laid and the last thing in the world he wants now is to go have a milkshake and see Cats with a teenage lunatic. The comedy is perfect. The loneliness (and perhaps homosexual overtones, left to the viewer’s interpretation) that Elijah is building beneath Mikey’s character is luscious. When rejected, he gets pissed and escapes through the skylight. The entire scene is supported by strong written material. But in the hands of these two men, one a comic and the other a skilled actor, Chain of Fool becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Elijah Wood’s last scene in the film is the second attempt to rub out Bollingsworth. He has a second soliloquy, which brings the character to resolution. "About half an hour ago, I thought I had a new friend. Then I realized he wasn’t much of a friend and was going to fuck him over. But then I remembered a job’s a job. I’ll kill you; and then, I’ll kill myself." The important transition in Elijah Wood’s acting in this scene is—we have left comedy. This is drama. His voice is soft, filled with resolve. The scene remains serious, even after the second hitman arrives and they begin a philosophical discussion on life and death—a bit Monty Python, but not as over the top as the charwomen who discuss Jean Paul Sartre. After Bollingsworth wakes up, sees the guns and dies of heart failure, the drama stops and the comedy resumes.

"Do you wanna grab a sandwich or something?" hitman 2 asks.

"Yeah sure."

"I’d like to really hear about that Senator Dove right from the horse’s mouth."

"Hey, do you wanna go to a show. What do you think of Cats?"

Elijah resolves Mikey, who gets a friend and, after ruminating the events of the last day may be on the road to becoming the 17-year-old youth he really is.

Comedy is more difficult to bring out successfully than Drama, any actor will tell you that. Those who fail, treat comic roles as comedy. Those who succeed, treat them as one would any role. Elijah Wood inhabits Mikey the Hit Man. He refuses to create a caricature or a bumpkin or a throwaway interlude between shooting the Lord of the Rings. He delivers a focused, intelligent interpretation in a sea of farce and good performances. Yet, despite his lack of top billing, he delivers the finest performance of all. As a result, Chain of Fools, a film with limited release has gained in popularity over the last five years as a great movie with a smart script and one brilliant diamond embedded in the setting—Elijah Wood.