More than meets the eye

Rating: Null/10 (15 April 1999)

Make no mistake; this slick, high-tech, bullet-spraying, kung-fu fighting movie is actually a very serious religious allegory. And while it is not exactly a complete transcription of Christian beliefs, it's no small coincidence that "The Matrix" opened up on Easter weekend.
Right from its sense of fulfilling prophecy through to its continual quest for metaphysical truth, or even to its final visual ascension of its main character, "The Matrix" is one of those wonderfully rare Hollywood movies that, while it appears on the surface to be one thing, is actually another. On the surface, it is a futuristic action film that fills the screen with fights, computers, and elaborate visual effects--but underneath all that the dialogue and lessons that the characters must learn are very specifically the route each one of us must take when questioning our own existence and our belief in an alternate reality or heaven and God. And even more remarkably, discovering the hidden world beneath the apparent surface of things is exactly what the story of "The Matrix" all about.
In "The Matrix," the lead character, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn), has been awakening those he can to the real truth about their existence, all the while searching--along with the lead female character, Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss)--for "the One" he believes fulfills the prophecy and will save the world. The difference between thinking and believing is key in "The Matrix," and Morpheus thinks he's found "the One" in the form of the mild-mannered, but anti-authoritarian computer programmer, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves)--who leads an alternate life as the computer hacker, Neo, obsessed with answering the question of "what is the Matrix?"
So, just what is the Matrix? In the proper spirit of the "personal quest" of "The Matrix," "you have to find out for yourself." Suffice it to say that as far as the story is concerned, it's a complex, but nicely explained, science fiction story that combines all our obsessions at the end of the millennium: guns and violence, interlinked communications networks, and our fear of computers ruling the world, all assembled in a dark, punk-music-infused framework with surprisingly less gratuitous violence than the previews would lead one to believe. In fact, "The Matrix" actually takes plenty of time to let its characters talk and let the audience mull over its complex and surprisingly thought-provoking concepts.