An extended preview of the last installment

Rating: 7/10 (18 May 2003)

This movie gives us more of the stuff we loved form the first movie - great action, superb special effects, and more philosophical meanderings. However, you can always get too much of a good thing, in this case, the fight scenes were repetitious and went much too long, most notably the fight scene with the Mr. Smiths. The movie could have been 15-30 minutes shorter (shorten the fight scenes and the "mosh pit"), and the story would have been much tighter and it would have moved along at a better pace. As well, I was left wondering how Neo ever got back to the ship - did he just appear? Never once do we see him use the old fashioned telephone technique. One is left assuming that he has suddenly acquired/honed a number of wonderful new skills. Finally, I have a real peeve that the the movie was simply designed to introduce the final installment. I would much prefer to see a complete movie that can stand on its own. The Wachowski brothers sold out just to make a few more bucks (several hundred million, to be precise). I can only hope that the last two segments are reedited into one intact movie that truly holds up to the original.