The Matrix is a contrived POS movie

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 1999)

What are they smoking when they're raving about The Matrix? I had the opportunity to see this film and I was appalled that it had NO trace of originality. Simply put, this is a live-action comic book with the self-consciously stricken characters, ludicrous fight scenes and tons of technical mumbo-jumbo repetition. This movie may belong in the serious neo-noir genre á la Blade Runner and the laughable Dark City, but it blatantly ripped off the crucial plot from Mamoru Oshii's 1995 visual mind trip animé Ghost in the Shell based on Masamune Shirow's torturiously complex manga, and a bit from Katsuhiro Otomo's groundbreaking Akira. It made me feel I was watching a live-action adaption of Ghost in the Shell coupled with the elaborate kung-fu and gun fighting sequences copied from Jackie Chan and John Woo. This is the newly-spawned version of Keanu Reeves' inferior predecessor Johnny Mnemonic, only better with mind-bending visual effects and decent acting in spite of a lame script chock full of tired by-the-book cliches. The Wachowski brothers may be complimented for their astounding vision (I've never seen the 3-D dimension revolving the characters in the "time slice" scenes done so well with style), but this movie is nothing short of a derivative sci-fi movie relying on visual eye candy and dark futuristic theme intended for the primarily target audience of pony-tailed comic book shop owners, computer geeks and aspiring artists. *1/2 out of four stars