Much more than I had expected - with intelligence even!

Rating: 10/10 (6 April 1999)

I walked into this movie with one thing on my mind - "The special effects will be awesome, the movie will suck." Boy, was I wrong. I had what a lot of people had - "Johhny Mnemonic" flashbacks prior to walking in. I mean, let's face it - he's never done Sci-Fi well.
Anyways, enough of expectations. From the moment Carrie-Ann Moss floated into the air and did her little Kung Fu maneuvers, I knew the special effects were going to be killer and I was hooked if for no other reason just to see more of that.
What I got was not only a special effects ride, but an engaging plot. Laurence Fishburne and his Obi-Wan like character fit him more nicely than I had thought it would. He was quite convincing as the man who has been "searching for the one". Keanu Reeves is not a fantastic actor, but he held his own here. He actually had me convinced that he was the "one".
The plot was incredibly intelligent even if it isn't new - it's the question philosophers have been battling for years - "What is reality?" The Wachowski brothers handled this question with incredible skill, however. They took a tired idea and repackaged it for today's vision of tomorrow's technology - the ultimate VR experience.