Pops and Bangs! Thrills and Spills! Form over Function!

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2003)

This film is dividing opinion. There are those who will embrace it, greeting Neo and Trinity like old friends, throwing themselves geekily and wholeheartedly into the next exhilarating adventure, sharing the thrill of the continuity error in chatrooms everywhere, and there are those who will stumble out of the cinema, blinkingly into the sunshine, wondering what just happened.
I tried to like it, honest I did. I would normally elaborate on the plot at this point, give you a rough outline of the story, but it was just so complicated that I really can't begin to tell you anything of any substance. It's a glossy good against evil flick really, with some hi-tech philosophy thrown in for good measure, but I can't provide much detail I'm afraid. My impressions of the first Matrix weren't that original; I was similarly blown away by the special effects but I had to be reminded of the story on the way into the cinema, which isn't a the best way to see a sequel, never mind review it. But that's the point - if the film contained anything worth remembering other than the effects, I wouldn't need a reminder.

However, it's the effects you come to see, and I would recommend seeing them on celluloid with the requisite surround-sound to reap the full benefits of the latest developments in CGI. There are whole sequences where the actors are not just flinging themselves around in front of a blue-screen, they aren't even there - Keanu takes on hundreds of smarmy Hugo Weavings single-handedly but barely breaks a sweat - even his facial expressions have been painstakingly computer generated. The film-makers were keen to offer the audience more than just a load of bullet-time sequences that made the first movie famous, apparently. This is a refreshing change from the increasingly lazy use of CGI to provide backgrounds of thousands of people marching, fighting, dying etc. as we've seen and yawned at in The Mummy Returns and Starship Troopers as earlier examples, and even the latest Lord of the Rings relied heavily on this kind of technique.

The freeway scene is a CGI masterpiece from beginning to nail-biting, climactic end and even though by now I was hopelessly confused, I was on the edge of my seat willing the enigmatic Fishburne to rescue the humble keymaker - from what, though? I couldn't tell you.
The film suffers from an over-complicated plot, laboriously explained in unnecessary depth by a number of predictably bizarre characters. Once I'd been nudged awake, I learned that one of these actors had actually died before the sequel could be made, so clearly the film makers have gone to enormous lengths to create her image with the aid of a computer and a lot of old footage. I'd almost have appreciated a small footnote at ths point in the movie explaining this as it would have made it worth watching.

The Matrix Reloaded is ultimately a lavish creation of form over function, and no matter how impressive the effects are, and they are jaw-droppingly, breathtakingly awesome at times, there is little of the kind of magic other sci-fi classics such as Star Wars that makes you care about what happens to the characters. The relationship between the expressionless, comatose Neo and the taut, fraught, angular Trinity is intended to be passionate but the acting is so wooden and contrived that it's just not very credible. I ended up watching her frown lines grow deeper as the film wore on, not worrying particularly whether their love would survive. But who cares? The effects will keep you going.