Joe Pants should have kicked Keanu's scrawny, woooden ass

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 1999)

Since I burst into violent, uncontrollable fits of laughter whenever the image of Keanu Reeves is projected onto a screen, I have avoided seeing "The Matrix" despite all the great things I have heard about it. To me, Mr. Reeves will always be Theodore Logan, esq. But when some friends invited us to see the film at the local drive-in (yes, they still have drive-in theaters) I felt that the only polite thing to do was to accept. Besides,this movie was made by the guys who made "Bound", I thought to myself. If "The Matrix" was half as good as "Bound", not even the horribly inept Reeves could scuttle it. I thought that this could be the one movie that would give the dork some credibility. I have never been so wrong in my life. This movie sucked royally.
It was the only movie in recent memory where I was actively rooting for the bad guys to kill all the good guys they could lay their hands on. It was an effort to sit through, and it wasn't because I was sitting in my '82 Subaru station wagon at the time. The plot (such as it was ) concerns a computer hacker named Anderson (Reeves) who is recruited by a mysterious underground group (led by Laurence Fishburne, waiting for his paycheck)to fight a dark conspiracy that affects all of humanity. It seems Anderson-whose screen name is Neo (subtle, huh?)-could be the messianic "chosen one" who will bring balance to the Force and bring down the evil galactic empire and...what? oh sorry, wrong movie. But that's the feeling I got when I was watching this predictable, pretentious mix of recycled plots and new-age techno-babble.I felt that I had seen this all before in countless other, better stories. To make things worse,there is a really creepy tone of pious pseudo-religiosity throughout the whole film. It was like watching a recruiting film to a second-rate cult. "Star Wars" uses the same kinds of religious metaphor, but at least Lucas and company have the good sense of not taking themselves too seriously. As for the much vaunted special effects and action sequences, all I can say is that that kind of stuff doesn't impress me as it it once did. These scenes were simply noisy rip-offs of Hong Kong chop-socky flicks. Reeves wasn't as bad as I thought he would be. But that's probably just because his garden variety mediocrity pales besides the sheer rotteness of the film itself. There are only two saving graces in this film. Joe Pantoliano is his usual terrific self and I found myself sympathizing with him, even though his character wasn't supposed to be sympathetic. But everyone else in the film was so nauseatingly noble that he was the only real human in the bunch.
Carrie Ann-Moss, who plays the tough and sexy Trinity was pretty good, until the God-awful ending where her character turns into a typical simpering Hollywood female and inexplicably falls in love with the male lead. Maybe her next movie will allow her to play a person and not a plot point. I hope the Wachowski Brothers have something better up their sleeves next time. They are in danger of becoming one -hit wonders.