The Matrix Refunded or "The conception of an average flick, earning lots of money"

Rating: 8/10 (10 June 2003)

(COULD CONTAIN SPOILERS THROUGH ALL THE TEXT, SO BEWARE)
I saw "The Matrix Reloaded" a month ago, and after assimilating the film, I've decided to expose my opinions, through this review. My first statement would be... WHAT A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT! :(
Probably the most expected movie of last centuries, "The Matrix Reloaded" begins a new chapter in a post-apocalyptic future world where humans are slaves of the machines, for energetic profits, prisoners in a virtual simulation called the "matrix". Zion, the last human city, is home of thousands of humans who have rejected the so called "matrix" program or have been saved by the soldiers of the Resistance. The machines are about to strike Zion and eradicate all living form in the city. For that's why all the captains of Zion's fleet summon a meeting, in order to decide the best strategy against the attack.
"The Matrix Reloaded" is the creation of the Wachowski Brothers, two young directors who love japanimotion, cyberpunk, videogames and Hong-Kong action movies. So, the film would be a combination of these 4 ingredients. If you dislike one of those 4 things, then I recommend you to be careful with this movie, because you'll find points that you will not be able to accept nor understand.
First, you must keep that true topic in mind: "2nd parts are worse". Well, "The Matrix Reloaded" is indeed worse than the first chapter, probably because the expectation, the trailer galore uploaded on the Internet... You would find lots of cons in the movie, but the most important flaw is the plot, its lack of a solid plot I must say...
Second, you should watch `The Matrix Reloaded' as the first `half-time' of the 5 hour movie that includes `Reloaded' and `Revolutions', so don't complain about the ending if it's rough and opened, because it's like watching a movie on the TV with ads.
The film begins with a kickass action sequence with Trinity aka the first scene in the original film. Then the "Trinity jumping out the building followed by an agent" scene, which is a demonstration of the new "bullet-time" technology used in this chapter. Then it follows the captain's meeting scene that ends up in the first Neo's fight in the movie, which in fact it's short and with no pace at all. Neo flies out the place and does his "superman" thing. At this point, lots of fans are cursing the directors...
But the "best" part hasn't arrived yet. After the Morpheus' Martin Luther King wanna be crappy speech, the rave/orgy party starts, with lots of nice chicks and guys dancing, all sweaty and sexy, like some kind of Christina Aguilera video. Question is: `what the hell they were thinking?!'.We will never know. Then after Neo & Oracle conversation, the Smith vs Neo round: I would compare this scene with the Yoda vs Dooku scene in Ep2, because both are risky scenes that need special effort to elaborate if they don't want to end it up stupid and false. I believe the Neo vs Smith scene is one of the best points in the movie. Despite the CGI is noticeable in several moments, the scene is enjoyable and eye candy.
The Merovingian scenes are quite odd. He delivers a speech that seems to be out of the plot completely (which in fact it's not), then Persephone kissing Neo, then the great staircase fight scene. The freeway chase scene that follows would be the reason to watch the film, an incredible use of the cinematographic techniques, achieving one of the most spectacular chases ever made. The Architect speech scene... well, most part of the audience got lost, but if you listen carefully the wordiness of the speech, you'll realize that it's the result of using the synonyms dictionary to change every word into an understandable bunch of extremely large sentences.

The actors perform exactly the same way they did in `The Matrix', but that doesn't mean their performances are as good as in the first film. Laurence Fishburne continues his Morpheus performance with an annoying Shakespearian cadence that may be a bit excessive in several moments. Keanu Reeves is performing a boring Neo, with no emotions nor reactions at all, with the same flat expression through the entire movie. Agent Smith follows his desires of liberty, showing bad attitude and anger, free now that he's no more `plugged' to the system. Trinity is more active this time, leading the freeway chase scene with great presence and performance.

The new characters are quite strange. The Merovingian and Persephone are the bad guys of the film for sure, the white ghost twins are just an excuse to show how good the SFX crew is, and they haven't got any plot meaning.

As you can see, `The Matrix Reloaded' is made of bits & pieces, like a rough collage of talking heads, nonsense dialogues, cheap philosophy and spectacular (but sometimes cheesy) CGI. It's a crossover between the japan animation and the videogame, so don't expect a solid argument. The directors could have delivered a great plot with good story, but they have preferred the economic benefit rather than the good criticism.
The truth is that the Wachowskis have created the largest and most intelligent merchandising movement around a movie in the 7th art history. If you want to catch everything in the movie or if you want to fill in the plot holes, you should have a look at the 9 animated short films called the ANIMATRIX and play the ENTER THE MATRIX videogame. Both ANIMATRIX and ENTER THE MATRIX come with very important information about the movie plot.

To sum up, `The Matrix Reloaded' is not the brilliant and imaginative film the first chapter was. It has got splendid breathtaking scenes, but in global the movie lacks of everything in every moment. The fans expected more from the Wachowski brothers, but in fact they gave us a film not easy to swallow, but with a clear tagline: FREE YOUR MIND. That's what you should do when watching `The Matrix Reloaded'.
7/10