Guess We Had To Have This Part

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2003)

With The Matrix an excellent, exceptional prologue to the trilogy, and the Revolutions promising to be a worthy epilogue, it is perhaps sad that Reloaded is such a plain movie. Admittedly, there are a series of very well-executed special effects in the movie. The fighting is great, though where Neo battles a crowd of identical opponents with a pole, the Brothers seem to have watched too closely how Sauron unconvincing batted enemies around in that other blockbuster. Where this movie goes wrong is in over-exposition. On at least four occasions, secondary characters are given ample opportunity to explain at length what the movie is about. These bits are just plain boring, though the underlying philosophical questions are fascinating in themselves. Also, there's a fair bit of utterly pointless sexuality, as well as a very lame secondary love plot. Nevertheless, this movie tells the middle part of the Matrix trilogy and as such is worth seeing, if only to connect the other two. If you liked the Matrix and are eagerly expecting Revolutions, you'll have to see this too. If you're not that interested and thought Matrix was the high point in cinematic history, you might be better off skipping this episode and just hope to make sense of part three. (Then again, you might even choose to wait until I've seen Revolutions and base your decision on what I say about that one... :-) )