Cool kung fu, but then it "tries" to be more and becomes something scary.

Rating: 6/10 (31 May 2001)

There are definite plot holes in this movie (come on, do you really think that just because you think you're dead you die?). And the back story makes no sense (why would a computer waste it's precious juice on such an elaborate hoax as the Matrix--if you cut the damn spinal cord, a humans will go nowhere and still generate just as much body heat and electrical impulses--and as expressed in the Terminator, computers have no pity, no remorse, so they wouldn't be sentimental enough to find some way to let people be happy). Cool kung fu, though.
Which brings us to the real reason I don't like Matrix much (6/10): like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor today, there is a lot of killing in the name of Good (the humans are killing humans to save them, while Bay shows the deaths of many US military personnel in a supposed effort to honor them) without any thought or reflection as to the implications. Once Lawrence Fishburne says that the humans can be inhabited by the enforcers, it becomes open season on everybody. This gives the message that slavery is worse than death. Personally, I've always thought Locke listed the inalienable rights in order of importance--life, liberty, then property. Once you're dead, you can't have any liberties. It's one thing to give your life for liberty, but it's another thing altogether to have your life taken away for that purpose. There used to be movies where it was debated whether it was even right to kill the bad guys (Casablanca, Lifeboat), now it seems to be open season all over again.