Kung fu and guns to fight unreality?

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 1999)

The Matrix is ideally suited to its target audience, 14-year-old boys. Lots of action and danger, little love interest, and a "What is reality, really?" theme.
It has overt echoes of "Alice" (Was it all a dream?) and Oz (not in Kansas any more: someone actually says "Pay no attention...") but there's an echo (Morpheus/Morbius) of Forbidden Planet and hence The Tempest, and of course, centrally, the gospels, with a Chosen One. Keanu Reeves is suitably humble.
I went for the special effects and was sometimes impressed (except for one patently computerised wall of flame), but at its heart, the story is flawed: why return to an illusory world to save a real one? Once there, ultra-violence is again the solution to all problems. Should we be surprised schoolboys go on rampages?
A flub: reality should not shimmer in the real world.
Hugo Weaving was suitably sinister: a cross between a young Jack Nicholson and Richard Nixon. Laurence Fishburne was credible as John the B^h^hMorpheus. Nice cameos from Rowan Witt as the boy who bends spoons and Gloria Foster as the Oracle (I was expecting Whoopi G. and I wasn't far wrong). It warmed my Kiwi heart to see a Maori name, Julian Arahanga (Apoc), in the credits.