Seen it all before

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2003)

This could quite easily have been called the Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Here's why:
--SPOILER ALERT--
We get to see Zion. As you'd expect no expense has been spared creating a realistic, living, breathing city, the cyberpunk architecture fits in perfectly with the post apocalyptic setting.
Fight Scenes - Choreography is amazing, but, the Wachowski Brothers seem to have fights for the sake of fights, typical example, before Neo meets the Oracle he has to fight her Chinese bodyguard. What we then get is five minutes of pointless fight scenes that are frankly, boring. More on fights later.
The Freeway scene - This was the best thing in the movie. Car chase was so-so but the bike chase was amazing, but ultimately, failed to live up to expectations. The WB said the would do for car chases what they did for fight scenes in the first one, so I expected them to be able to manipulate the physics of the car to flip it, fly etc. Okay sounds ridiculous but it would work, right? Instead we get some ballet dancing cars flying about the screen, which, okay, looks cools, but isn't exactly groundbreaking.
The Architect - Okay, a lot of people have said this was a real zzzzzzz moment, but I thought it was the most interesting and revealing moment in the film. So, we're in Matrix 6.0. Is Neo real, or a program? Is Zion even real? All will be revealed in 6 MONTHS TIME! DOH!
The Bad
Fight Scenes - As I said earlier, too many. The "Burly Brawl" was fun for a while, but it should have been cut a lot sooner than it was. In fact, that goes for the whole of the movie, its like they didn't know when to cut the movie, everything goes on for WAAAAY too long. Anyway, later on we get Neo vs 100 Smiths round 2 in the corridor. Utter crap. We saw it once there was no need to do it again, It bored me.
Acting - Okay, Keanu Reeves is not a good actor. Sorry for any loyal devotees out there but this movie confirms that. Typical example the dialogue scene with the oracle. It seems as though Neo is simply reading his lines from an autocue, his dulucent tone failing to enliven an already boring and (yep, overlong) conversation. Laurence Fishurne is a good actor, but as Morpheus he gets to be little more than Stereotypical wise black guy no 265, delivering a string of philosophical lines that wouldn't be out of place in a Shakespeare play. Which brings us neatly to...
Dialogue - Uh Oh, have the Wachowski's ever spoken to a real person? The dialogue is AWFUL. Don't they know how people speak in real life? Everything feels sooooo forced, it wouldn't be out of place in Othello or Hamlet. In fact, after the explosive first five minutes we then get to watch a tedious half hour of this, interlinked with a quick entrance of Zion.
Too many characters - The first Matrix was relatively straight forward, a couple of main characters, and a few background ones. Now suddenly we have a host of new ones, Niobe (Who does nothing, I assume she's in Revolutions more) Merovingian (Whats the deal with the girl and the cake?) And many others. Also, character use. The twins are awesome, yet they are terribly underused, and they die (Do they?). Too many sub plots with these characters confuse things further.
Dance/Sex Scene - Why? Why? Why drag this out for ten minutes? A couple of minutes would have sufficed. The party was, well bizarre, the interwinding sex scene, pathetic. Why oh why did they feel the need to slowly zoom out from the tunnel cum bed thing they're using? A real waste of ten minutes this.
THE UGLY (Nay Dodgy)
Fight Scenes - Unfortunately were reminiscent of a game of Tekken, no, no, Street Fighter, boring backgrounds (Playground anyone?) and some dodgy CGI made the fight scenes look like a video game, coupled with the fact that each character had their own moves. Neo had his triple kick, Morpheus had his Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon thingy and Trinity had... her high kick? Whatever, it was all too familiar too number one.
Right, rant over, overall not a terrible film, it just failed to live up to my expectations. Cool scenes ruined by overlong exposure, terrible dialogue, but at least some nice new plot twists that should be explained in Revolutions. Worth seeing if just for the Freeway chase.
Overall 7/10