Much glitz, little content. [spoilers]

Rating: 3/10 (6 November 2001)

You cannot help but be impressed with the tremendous amount of work that went into the making of this movie, but the result is much flash and dazzle with very little content. I would have hoped for more.
The plot is so confused and confusing that I gave up trying to make any sense out of it after about 20 minutes. The plot line ultimately reverts to a classic good-guys vs. bad-guys shoot-em-up. The movie is kind of a "Karate Kid" on steroids, except that the characters in "The Karate Kid" are much more involving.
The subtheme concerning the nature of reality adds no new insight in trying to answer this eternal question. Any child who stops to think about the artificial reality created strictly by the mind in the dream state has gotten as far as this movie makes you go. "The Forbidden Planet" examines this question in a much more interesting and thoughtful way.
The subtheme concerning finding "The Chosen One" seemed to be thrown in as an attempt at trying to give the hopelessly misguided script some heft. Some "meaning." If you want to see a beautiful and sensitive treatment of this, see Scorsesse's "Kundun."
Except for Fishburn, the acting was uniformly wooden. Keanu Reeves seems to have the emotional range of a potato. I wound up not caring for any of the people in this movie - whether they lived or died made no difference to me. I found the love interest unbelievable.
The intro to the DVD made me think that I was going to like the music at least. But I cannot even remember this movie as having a soundtrack, it was so unmemorable.
The agents for the Matrix were stereotypical, in a movie that seemed to want to break stereotypical images - like the supreme Mother being an aging and unattractive lower middle class woman. If you are really thinking about how to be innovative in portraying evil, think of the devil in "The Last Temptation of Christ."
I think about this movie in comparison to "2001" in trying to figure why I liked "2001," but disliked this movie so much. Both movies have memorable images, but "2001" creates a sense of beauty and mystery, whereas "The Matrix" creates a sense of anxiety and dread.
Ultimately I found "The Matrix" to be drab, depressing and cold. I found its glorification of violence repellent.