A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Matrix Reloaded

Date Viewed: 5/24

Details:

Monica Bellucci

Laurence Fishburne

Gloria Foster

Randall Duk Kim

Carrie-Anne Moss

Jada Pinkett Smith

Keanu Reeves

Hugo Weaving

Directed by: The Wachowski Brothers (Andy & Larry Wachowski)

Score: 0

The Review: Long awaited sequel, much ballyhooed, but all I felt was an overpowering ennui. There's very little going on, there's little that's novel, and there's damn little novel goings-on. When I reviewed the original Matrix, I ended with the comment: "This deserves a sequel; I'm waiting for Matrix II: System Crash." Well, one should be careful about what one wishes for.

Neo (Reeves), Morpheus (Fishburne) and Trinity (Moss) all return, and the plot (such as it is) revolves around an attack on Zion, the mounting of a defense, and several pointless visits to the virtual uber-world. This sequel comprises long, quiet, meandering philosophical monologs punctuated by hyperkinetic Matrix-style combat -- yes, it's become sufficiently well-recognized by now so as to be archetypic. There is indeed some excellent SFX and (in particular) chase scene staging -- I still cringe remembering Trinity on the Ducati -- but it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. The film is not quite humorless, but it's definitely humor-starved; something has been lost in the cloning.

Confusing? Not really: no more so than a standard mystery novel, certainly no more than any recent thriller (e.g., Identity). However, it just starts out -- continuing, as if no pause existed. No concession whatsoever is made to viewers who either missed the original Matrix or hadn't chosen to see it (and memorize the dialog) since its original release. For those few viewers, however -- although I cannot imagine why someone would want to see Matrix Reloaded without Matrix as prelude -- confusion may be the least of their worries.

Perhaps my memory is flawed from a gap of four years, but now Zion is a physical place of refuge, instead of a disembodied computer mainframe. The culture of the refugees is certainly more fully drawn in this episode, but it is not that interesting, nor is Zion itself: it is gritty and large, but neither Zion nor its designs or visualizations give rise to any sense of awe. You would get more chills from the animated artifact in Titan A.E. The conflict between man and machine continues, but it is muted and less primal. Man-on-man conflict (if that's what you want to call it) is much more stylized, to the extent that I got bored watching the fight scenes. So what if Mr. Smith (Weaving) can clone himself?! Perhaps this is an extremely difficult digital effect, but it did not wow me in the least. Yawn!

So the virtual reality movie returns after a long hiatus -- with a computational model that is perhaps the simplest of any in his genre (about the same level as Total Recall; much less complex than either eXistenZ or The 13th Floor), but one which still presents major credibility problems of bandwidth.

(11-Jun-03)

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