You may think you know what's coming; trust me, you don't.

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2003)

Because the media hype over a movie can sometimes leave me with an extreme distaste for the film itself (Titanic comes to mind), two days ago I decided to lower my expectations of "The Matrix Reloaded."
What was I thinking?!!?
To say I was blown away would be an understatement. I was left speechless, babbling incoherently like a C-list talk show host going through heroin withdrawal. I simply could not believe how good that movie was.

Which is not to say that it was better than the first. I enjoyed it immensely, but I can't say that. The plot, action sequences, visual themes and overall style of the film was so fresh and new when "The Matrix" debuted in 1999, that you couldn't help but be blown away.
This time around, the whole Matrix motif is well established, so in that sense, it's not new. But as my girlfriend Holly put it, the first film set up the premise of the Matrix and established the overall story. In the second film, they really ran with it.
They run, kick, jump, dodge, morph and explode with it, too.
I loved seeing Zion. I loved the interaction with the other members of the resistance. I loved the fact that Morpheus is shown less as a solid foundation of wisdom and more like an eccentric captain bent on proving the

I'll leave the spoilers to others. Solid acting from Harry Lennix as Cmndr Locke, Morpheus' foil. Gloria Foster's oracle was, again, wonderful. Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus was, of course, Shakespearean as ever. And Neo and Trinity, well, my only complaint about the depiction of their relationship was the gratuitous love scene in the middle of the movie. Other than that, I thought the acting was solid.
Being the middle movie in a trilogy, it clearly doesn't resolve much. And that's okay. By that point in the film, your mind is so bent out of shape trying to process the stupendous special effects and action sequences while SIMULTANEOUSLY trying to follow the intense plot. Gotta remember, great CGI means NOTHING if there's no story. And BOY, is there story.

I have to be honest -- three quarters of the way through the movie, I thought I knew what to expect, but the last 25 minutes or so were nothing short of AMAZING. I'm still trying to sort it all out, but it's going to take another viewing [plus repeated walkthroughs of the video game -- another subject entirely].
Needless to say, I'm a fan of the movie. Go see it. Even if you see it as nothing but eye candy, you're guaranteed to be entertained. But if you're like me and you buy into the Matrix universe willingly and expectantly, this movie will knock your socks off.