This movie's got no soul

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2003)

Wow, this is not a good film: to be honest, i don't know what i was expecting, as I didn't think the original Matrix was that great either: sure, the action was pretty cool, but everything else was a bit hackneyed. A film set in the future where we're all slaves of some kind? Haven't heard of that one before. Plus, in Neo, Morpheus (silly name) and Trinity we had the three most dull characters in the history of cinema. Trinity's obsessive affections for Neo would have been mildly convincing were it not for the fact that Neo, the saviour of the universe, is played by... Keanu Reeves, surely the most baffling phenomenon to strike Hollywood: he's only good at playing morons (Bill and ted, Point Break) and his only talent is being able to make the terrifying notion of a bomb on a bus sound as dull as watching Songs of Praise on a sunday evening. Still, the action was fun, so it weren't all bad.
The Matrix Reloaded is all bad. For a start, it's preposterously straight faced, full of dull portent and cod-philosophy that becomes exceptionally wearing over two or so hours. The total dearth of characterisation is even more obvious second time around: it's this flaw that completely spoils the action, which was the only thing I was even expecting to be good. Sure, it's spectacular, but it's not exciting, or tense, because you know nothing about these half-dimensional characters to feel any suspense for them. Plus, the fact that neo is virtually invincible means that there's no real contest as to who's going to win. there's a fight about every ten minutes, and each fight goes on forever, and not one gets you on the edge of your seat. Sure, it's technically impressive, but there's no soul underneath. It's all a load of self-consciously cool posturing, cheesy in-jokes and lame dialogue.
I really felt bad for seeing this: deep down i knew it was going to pretty poor, but I didn't expect the action to be rubbish as well. It is without a doubt one of the most dull blockbusters ever made: however, it doesn't even have the perverse 'Oh my god I'm watching a once decent saga disintegrate before my very eyes' fascination that the appalling Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had to offer. No, The Matrix wasn't that great to begin with, and this is worse. Yet, this film is going to be blatantly bigger than God: such a shame. It's easily one of the most pretentious films I've seen in ages, and it's fooling a lot of people into thinking it's something deeply meaningful with the irony-free platitudes spouted interminably by it's blank protagonists (two worst scenes: Morpheus' speech at Zion, and the pointlessly verbose encounter with between Neo and a surprise character at the end), and the fact that everyone wears black and no one smiles at all only adds to the irritating self-importance of it all. No wait, Agent Smith smiles a few times: ironically, he's by far and away the most human character in the film, he was certainly the best thing in the first film, but they really overegged the whole 'Hello, Mr. Anderson' routine this time around. Everyone else acts like they are robots.
It so badly wants to be cool, yet this utterly soulless experience uses a mask of pretension to hide the fact that this is pure trash. And not the kind of trash that's cool. The kind of trash that is quite simply, TRASH.
Really, really poor. And it has what is quite possibly the most unexciting, uninteresting cliffhanger of all time.