Pretentious and overblown

Rating: 3/10 (26 December 2003)

The Matrix is the first installment of a "trilogy" of sci-fi movies. In fact, it's not really a trilogy, in an organic sense, it's just a movie and its sequels.
Anyway, "The Matrix" is a film with good premises, but bad developments. Although most of the ideas of the film were taken from sci-fi writers of the 60's and philosophers of the past (the idea that we exist as a thought, or a dream, goes back to Plato at least), the script did a good job in putting these ideas together in a modern plot (at least as for year 2000). The oniric influence of recent sci-fi comic books on the film is visible throughout and is what makes the visual appeal of the film.
Unfortunately, what could have been a really good movie has been turned by the W. brothers into an average action flick targetted at 15 year-old boys, among which must belong the guys who wrote this flick is the "best movie" they've seen. There is almost no acting, and the heros wearing sunglasses all the time is a good way to avoid any sort of emotion to show on their faces. This total absence of emotion is one of the reasons why nobody gives a f..k whether or not everyone dies in the sequels.
The W. brothers have a strong tendency to show off : heroes wearing sunglasses and Armani black leather coats designed for yuppies, trendy night-club population, "bullet time" special FX, (ugly) kung fu video game action, heavy metal and techno music during the whole film, etc. All this is supposed to make the film look "kewwwwl". In opposition to the heros, the agent Smith wears a dark working suit : he is not cool (although he also wears sunglasses, but that's because he is a spy agent).
But what really turns me off is the pretense of the religioso-philosophico-technobabble which hardly hides the vacuity of the characters and the serious weaknesses of the script. There are so many other films which say much more with less, that this film looks highly overblown in comparison.
I'm not even trying to elaborate on the sequels, which, instead of correcting these problems, show them in their full splendor.
In a word, this flick is highly overrated. But hey, who cares ? The "trilogy" has ripped off enough spectators to make the Warner happy.