Reloaded, you say?

Rating: 5/10 (14 July 2007)

Reloaded, the Matrix? In a sense, it's true... But in another sense, it's far from it...
More explosive than ever, more spectacular, containing more action than the client could ask and far less satisfying than the first episode, "The Matrix Reloaded" is nothing more than a very ordinary sequel...
The story from this second act isn't set directly after the events of the first one, but some time after. The clues are rather obvious anyway. Neo (Keanu Reeves) already knows Zion very well and also its inhabitants, while at the end of the first movie, he hadn't set a single foot there before.
To be more precise, I think that it is set six months after "The Matrix".
The story from the second film follows Neo in his quest to destroy the Matrix. The Oracle (Gloria Foster) informs him that to get through with it, he must reach the Source, located on a building level where "no elevator can go and no stair can reach". But first, Neo has to find the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim), the only person who can give him the access to the door which leads to the Source.
This mission will not be without any pitfall for Neo. The Keymaker is kept prisoner by a rogue program named Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), shaped as a Don Juan-like man who is obsessed with the French language at the point that he learns nearly every insult from it. Merovingian is surrounded by many more-or-less interesting henchmen who are not worth the potential of our favorite super-cool hero. Except two strange twins (Neil and Adrian Rayment) who can transform themselves into invincible ghosts. These two characters are undoubtedly the most interesting villains after Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving).
And talking about Agent Smith, you thought he was dead, didn't you? Don't you believe it! Because he's back! He's as powerful as he was before, but he acquired the capacity of copying himself as many times as he pleases. This makes the matters even more difficult for Neo and the other protagonists.
If you're the kind of viewer who got an eye on the action scenes in the first movie, then be sure that you won't get bored here. Because there's plenty of action here...
The special effects used in the first movie all come back and they're usually upgraded by the Wachowski Brothers, so they can get to a superior level. After all, why would they change a winning formula? But there's an answer anyway: it's less surprising. The reason why "The Matrix" was so breathtaking is because the effects of bullet time and time-slicing appeared like something new and innovating. But what is done here is recycling...
It seems that the Wachowski Bros. haven't learned from Stephen Sommers when he made "The Mummy Returns".
In the first movie, the main dish in terms of action was the ultra-stylized slow-motion lobby fusillade, made to look like a John Woo movie sample. This time, the main dish is more conventional, because it's a high-speed pursuit on a busy freeway. Besides, it's the only scene from the movie that hasn't been shot in Australia, because it was actually shot in a specially-built highway in Alameda, California. The chase is spectacular and provides a lot of high thrills. However, it looked interminable to me.
The first battle between Neo and the Agent Smith clones is also interminable. The fact that the Wachowskis experiment new kinds of figures to impress us is actually not-so impressive. By moments, you can also clearly see the artificial Neo doing the CG stunts. I think that we should not see those kinds of scenes, especially in such a movie, where advanced technology is the only true thing that drives the picture.
But what truly strips the interest of "The Matrix Reloaded" from "The Matrix", it's the reject of addressing philosophical issues to the characters and viewers at the same time. "The Matrix" was interesting because of the numerous spiritual questions that it raised, most notably about the definition of reality. The second movie tries to redeem itself by giving to its characters the occasion of asking questions that are nearly impossible to understand and even less to answer, which doesn't fix anything up. "The Matrix" was complex, but it stayed sufficiently clear to be understood by the everyman and the everywoman. "The Matrix Reloaded" is just too much difficult to catch.
"The Matrix Reloaded" is definitely spectacle-oriented. And in more ways than one...
Not only are there really epic action sequences, but the sequence of the Zion cave is also made on a big scale, with hundreds, if not thousands of extras. We can see Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) pronouncing a speech reminiscent of Winston Churchill in the Battle of Britain, followed by a lengthy and perfectly useless sequence of dances and proto-primitive musics.
In short, "The Matrix Reloaded" is not a bad movie, but you must really be a big fan of the Matrix franchise to appreciate it.
I don't know what the third movie will look like, because the first two were so different in style than we cannot really predict what will be retained. Ideally (and obviously), the best thing to do would be to combine the best elements from the first two pics, but it's easier to mean it than doing it.
So, will Neo accomplish his destiny? Will everybody survive? Will humanity be victorious over the machines? To take an already well-known question: "What is the Matrix... end?"