Flashy, Exciting, Punch-Packing, Visually Charged Sci-Fi Conspiracy Movie

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2009)

Neo is a computer hacker searching for truths; he gets one bigger than he imagined. A group of rebels, led by Morpheus, reveal that the entire world is a simulation created by AI systems, and in the real world humans are farmed purely for the energy they produce. What's more, Morpheus believes Neo is a prophecied hero, the only man who can defeat the machines. Scared and disoriented, what does fate have in store for Neo ?
The Matrix is a great action/sci-fi hybrid movie, with terrific fights (choreographed by martial arts legend Woo-Ping Yuen), great special effects and oodles of clever ideas, all mixed up into a thrill-a-minute action blockbuster of the kind Hollywood does so well. It leaves you breathless; the crazy ideas come so thick and fast, you're still absorbing the plot before you're into the next eye-popping action sequence. Having said that though, I must register a couple of criticisms about this film, and specifically the way the publicity machine marketed it as a revolutionary story with landmark visual effects. I don't think the story is really that original - plenty of movies have dealt with computer worlds (e.g. Tron, eXistenZ), the conceptual ideas appear in lots of sf writing (notably Douglas Adams and William Gibson), the structure comes from Alice In Wonderland and a lot of the plot from Masamune Shirow's manga Ghost In The Shell. The thing it reminds me of most is a 1976 Dr Who story called The Deadly Assassin, which features an extended fight in a neural-network virtual battleground called, you guessed it, The Matrix. So not so original then. The story is also inconsistent - we never really know what powers anyone has in the virtual world. Why does Neo survive death when we've been explicitly told (and shown) you can't ? Why does everyone use kung-fu - why not just mind-zap people ? Why does Agent Smith (a terrific restrained snarling performance by Weaving) get emotional when he's a computer program ? Having said that, I'd much rather watch a film like this, filled with interesting quasi-religious/philosophical ideas (the explanation for deja-vu, Smith's comparison of mankind to a virus) but which leaves them all hanging, any day. My other bugbear is the bullet-time shots, using multiple still cameras and computer interpolation to track round a slow-mo or frozen image - these are kinda cool I guess, but the movie has so much else going on, it doesn't really need a gimmick. Undeniably, the technique has been hugely influential though, particularly in videogames. What really scores for me in this instead is the good old-fashioned basics of film-making - good storytelling, great photography and music, a terrific sense of undiluted escapism and fine performances - how does Fishburne keep those sunglasses on ? Produced by Joel Silver, and followed by two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.