What a disappointing mess!

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2003)

This movie is woefully lacking ... it fails to deliver in virtually all the areas that made the original Matrix effective and powerful as a film: timing, restraint, flow, subtlety, strong script-writing, character, motivation, humanity, conceptual depth, streamlined exposition, clarity of purpose and intention. All of these are absent from the film. All that remains is an excessive, muddled mess, which neither style, state-of-the art FX nor Keanu's fine performance can redeem. Here we traverse the hackneyed components of the standard action film ... the shoot-out, the fist-fight, the car chase, the encounter with the degenerate power-broker, gratuitous sexuality, the search for the "maguffin" (in this case a key), with werewolves and and a oblique reference to the Holy Grail added for good measure?!. All of this is familar territory, which has been done much better in previous films (the car chase in Ronin blows this one away, despite all the special FX). I emerged from the theatre in a mild state of shock asking myself "What the **** was that!?" I've read reviews that said "if you didn't like it, you didn't understand it." How could you not understand this film, when they explain EVERYTHING to the point of mind-numbing boredom? The word for this movie isn't "deep", it's "duh!"