I took the red pill...again.

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2003)

I am a huge fan of The Matrix; I like it more than any other film franchise, more than Star Wars, more than Lord of the Rings, more than the rest of them. The Matrix Reloaded was a film that I had anxiously been waiting for over a very long time. I knew of the sequels the first time I saw The Matrix, but my waiting went into hyper-drive when I saw the first teaser for the sequels one year ago before Attack of the Clones. For one year, I waited anxiously and it was all worth it.
I find it funny that two weeks before Reloaded came out that there was X2, a movie that takes the world its predecessor (X-men) started and expands it, opens it up, and plays around with it. This is essentially what Reloaded does, it takes the world that The Matrix teased us and introduced us with and adds more characters, more options, more action and more mystery, after answering questions I had about the first one, and of course, more cool sunglasses.
My experience with watching Reloaded the first time was the same as seeing The Matrix the first time. They have the essentially the same flow. They both start out with Trinity beating up cops and end with Rage Against the Machine. They both have first halves that focus more on plot and second halves that end with a lot of action.
The action is pumped up from the first. The Matrix had well choreographed fights that were pretty one sided, consisting of mostly either Neo or Morpheus getting trampled by an Agent. Here Neo is up to par with the cyber thugs he encounters, so the fights can go either way, making them more amusing and more enjoyable. I watch a lot of Kung Fu films, I am a Jackie Chan and Jet Li junkie, and I do have to say that the fights in this film are some of, if not the best group fights ever choreographed. People punch, kick, flip and fight with a level of fluid poetry that amazes me.
I was also dumbfounded by the car chase sequence. Much like the lobby shootout in its predecessor Reloaded takes something we take for granted in a movie, in this case a car chase, and just makes it look jaw droppingly good. Every crash, every swerve it was like the idea that cars colliding together in a destructive manner was ever possible, or entertaining, had never crossed my mind. I was practically applauding during the fight between Morpheus and the Agent on the back of the semiI've dreamed of seeing two people fight on the back of a semi for years.
As for the special effects, some of the time they are noticeable. In the fight between Neo and Agent Smith you can notice that for a few of the stunts, it's not Keanu Reeves but a CGI rendering. I frankly don't care, I would rather have a CGI Keanu perform some of those stunts rather than see the real Keanu attempt it and break his neck. Overall it doesn't matter to me whether or not they use special effects because Neo, whether CGI or not, swatting around Agent Smiths like baseballs, is just pure fun to the Nth degree.
All of the lovable characters are back, Neo is still the unsure antagonist, Trinity is still the butt kicking babe, and Morpheus is back as the calm wise leader that he has always been, and Agent Smith is back and better than ever as the lovable villain that he is. New lovable characters are introduced like Merovingian and his wife Persephone, and their two body guards, The Twins, that have the ability to walk through walls. All of these characters are slightly over the top, making the deep insides of the matrix seem like a twisted Alice in Wonderland type of place.
My only problem with the film is that the supporting human cast aren't as interesting. The character of Link was obviously written for the part of Tank (who was excluded from the sequels due to the actor who played him being a pain in the butt, supposedly) and the kid who follows Neo around (I don't believe his name was mentioned) reminds me too much of Mouse from the first film.
The plot is the key to the movie, it's intelligent, and it takes precedence over the action. If you sit in the theater with your brain tuned to the action sequences, then you won't understand the plot, because it isn't dumbed down (it took me a 2nd viewing to get it down completely). It has a cliffhanger ending that you had to pay attention to the plot fully to get. That is what I love about Reloaded most of all, that it feels like the film that the directors wanted to make, rather than some studio-run explosion fest made for cash purposes only. Essentially this film is like art, you're either going to like it or hate it, regardless of your initial feelings about the first film.
Overall The Matrix Reloaded is a film that has mind boggling action scenes inside a plot that is as deep and meaningful as you want to take it. I have seen many themes from many areas of human thought, too much to list. This is the reason that I love The Matrix series so much, is that there are themes and meanings galore to entertain yourself, letting you choose how deep within the rabbit hole you want to go.