Laughably Awful

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2001)

The good: The action scenes involving guns are original. The "frozen moment" camera effect is well done.
The bad: The script is uneven and horribly horribly written. I mean Saturday morning cartoons are better written than this, not even good cartoons either, I think that the average episode of Voltron or Scooby Doo have more meaningful and profound scripts. The main characters can't even manage to be two dimensional.
The ugly: The acting is hideous, and I'm not just talking about the spoken lines. I can almost hear Keanu saying "dude" after every line. Fishburne is also attains a whole new level of corniness, Mumra on Thundercats levels of melodrama. As in another over-hyped movie, Crouching Tiger etc. etc., no amount of special effects can disguise the fact that these people do not know martial arts. The fight scene between Fishburne and Reeves made me laugh out loud, and not in a happy way, more of a "I can't believe how pathetic this is" kind of defensive laugh. Hong Kong movies made in the late seventies have better wirework. The cookie cutter villain is actually the most compelling character, and that my friends is sad.
This is what really makes me nauseous: Two more movies are coming out. Umm... did I miss something here? I thought that the movie's only redeeming quality was the "surprise" midway through when we found out what "The Matrix" was. There's not much sequel material here to work with.
The first half of this movie is decent in that it doesn't really insult the viewer. As soon as Reeves wakes up in the tank, the movie becomes a laughable, pretentious Saturday morning cartoon. Junior high kids should eat it up, but any reasonably intelligent person who has read a book in his or her life will take absolutely nothing from this move of any lasting value. A truly mind-numbing movie.