Already Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (2 April 1999)

Everybody else has already said most everything positive I have to say about this movie. Great action, kudos for actors doing their own kung-fu..et all. But. There is a huge downside to this movie that has seemingly escaped everyone else commenting here. These down sides don't keep The Matrix from being a decent guy movie, or a decent techno-geek movie, but they do keep it from being anything resembling a good cinematic movie:
Foremost is the cliche'd and campy-as-hell dialog. Lawrence Fishbourne is a fine actor, and I cringed for his sake every time he was forced to say inane things like "He is The One" with conviction every ten minutes. Much of the rest of his dialogue is just as vague and pseudo-foreboding (The One, The Oracle, The Matrix, The Agents...the horror! Come on, even mediocre sci-fi should be able to get beyond this). I was doing my best to believe in a world to support the stunning action, but with each character spewing Total Recall-ish lines and bad Dark City outtake ideas, it was damned near impossible. Half the lines are embarrassedly half-hearted attempts at lame self-realization, with metaphors like "the path" and "the door" overused to create an overriding question of destiny, a question which doesn't hold together well enough to ever be answered. By the time The Matrix tries to answer it, we no longer care what it has to say.
Then there's the vague excuse for a plot, the shining moments of which are buried under some truly awful scenes. The truth behind The Matrix is vague and unexplained, and I got the impression that this was not because of some sly sleight-of-hand by the Wachowski brothers, but rather because they weren't ever able to create an insightful explanation that held together. In my book, any plot where the main character's resurrection is explained by "Well, he can't die, because I love him!" isn't any plot at all.
Lastly, the plot has holes, chief among them the fact that a near-dead Morpheus does NOT have holes at all after sitting unmoving in the middle of a room that has just been chain-gunned halfway to hell. I suppose Neo not only controls his aim with his world-bending powers, but also uses his power to make a notoriously inaccurate chaingun perfectly precise? Also..when you're standing on top of a building, on the edge of the roof, and a terrific explosion happens right below you, the force is going to blow you the hell back, whether or not you're the hero in the movie.
Despite all these attempts to make The Matrix just another crappy American action movie, it does stand out in a few ways. Everything visual is amazing, from the fights to the futuristic scenes (the baby-harvesting scene is enough to make anybody's blood run cold) to the futuristic city set (watch for the black doorman in the tux by the elevator..a great touch.) The scene with The Oracle is also a cut above, with the waiting room and The Oracle herself far more original than the rest of The Matrix. The spoon-bending kid is especially interesting, even if she is practising Buddhism without a license.
On the whole..this movie is at most a 5 or a 6 out of 10, chiefly because of the action scenes. The dialog is crap, the plot is half-assed, but this movie does a good job of being all about "guns. Lots of guns." It's in the same vein as Total Recall, but better, but don't go expecting to see the next Blade Runner, or even the next Dark City.