uninvolving sci-fi thriller

Rating: 6/10 (30 October 1999)

As the world and the movies head into a brand new millenium, old narrative formats have been gilded with all the techno/cyber concepts and jargon that now inundate us in our daily lives. In no areas of filmmaking is this more true than the action/adventure and sci-fi genres. Probably the most popular example to date comes in the form of "The Matrix", a film that actually chooses as its setting a never-never land located somewhere between reality and the abstract plane of cybernetics.
The plot of the film, though too complex to reiterate here, is actually put forward in a fairly straightforward, comprehensible manner. What is missing from the film is the essential grounding in reality that makes the audience care if the main characters succeed in their mission (to rescue the world of course) or fail. Unlike say "Enemy of the State", which managed to grapple with the potential dangers of an over-computerized and mechanized society in a world with which we are all familiar, "The Matrix" takes us to a sci-fi world that never fully engages the audience in even its own reality. Part of the problem may be that the film's visual designers settle for the conventional sci-fi view of the future world as a series of dark, cramped, fog enshrouded rooms and corridors familiar to us from countless such movies. We follow the obviously well thought-out and meticulously explained storyline but find ourselves never particularly engaged in the characters or feel any stake in the outcome of the final resolution. As to the film's much vaunted special effects, they are, admittedly at times, intriguing, but since computer graphics now make even the most preposterous situations possible on the screen, the audience craves more than simply scattered moments of jawdropping visuals to engage its full attention. "The Matrix" borders on dullness quite often during its overlong 136 minute running time. Perhaps a movie that takes place in a world that really isn't a world needs a more engaging central character to make the audience care.