Not everything I hoped for...

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2003)

There's no doubt about it, Reloaded is a visual masterpiece. Upon viewing, the audience will no doubt be blown away by the near-seamless special effects. The fight sequences in Reloaded are nothing short of phenomenal: flowing, turbo-charged, and at times even clever. Not a single complaint there.
The problem thus lies in Reloaded's style. Whereas the original Matrix is subtle, Reloaded tends to jump out and beat the audience senseless at unnecessary times. The Matrix was chock-full of violence (though not gore) and sexual tension (though not overdone explicitness, reminiscent of a low grade rap music video). Reloaded seemed to take the easy way out of attracting the Average Joe viewer one too many times. I would suggest that the makers of this film remember that the audience occasionally enjoys figuring things out on their own, not being force-fed.
I won't go so far as to say that Reloaded is bad, or to suggest that a potential viewer pass up this eye-feast of a film. I will, however, withhold my final judgment of the film for the second viewing, where I'm hoping that the seemingly gratuitous tendencies of the plot will resolve into satisfying underlying themes. (Reloaded's pacing is very stop-and-go, alternately subjecting the audience to long, incredible fight and chase sequences, and long, dialogue scenes; consequently causing the viewer to tend to zone out during the important dialogue scenes, thereby -- hopefully -- missing the less obvious underlying themes on the first go-around.)

All in all, Reloaded doesn't hold a candle to The Matrix, but is definitely worth the seven-odd bucks of a viewing, or if you hope to catch all the dialogue, the fourteen-odd bucks of a second.