The main thing is this movie IS entertaining

Rating: 9/10 (27 October 2012)

I believe art is an emotional argument about what is important. This time the Wachowskis set out to make my point with a wonderfully inventive mix of stories that basically have little but the emotions they elicit in common, that and the actors in them. You won't be bored, but there isn't much enlightenment here either though I can't disagree with their main two points as I saw them, that there is more to life than living and we are all interconnected such that we make our own future with every misstep or triumph.
It's as if the Wachowskis were attempting to make those points with story. I'm not sure that they did but then I pretty much believed something very similar before seeing the movie. So I was left a bit disappointed. Also I'm not sure I was as comfortable with their choice of lead actors as they were, or with their choice of characters, in particular the devil-like character didn't work very well, I thought. But this is such a sprawling vehicle, nothing was all that much of a put off and I can't remember the last time I sat this long without squirming.
The art work in the futuristic scenes was effective, I thought, though often somewhat derivative of sci-fi classics like Tron, Blade Runner and Soylent Green. On the other hand the scenes of tribal life seemed oddly unconvincing. But I can't really complain. In general all of the parallel stories seemed interesting and were fun to watch. But this is not a normal movie so be open-minded.