its perfection is its failure

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2003)

In terms of sheer visual beauty this movie is amazing. from the clothes, to the fighting sequences to the unflinching expressions of cool permanently present on every characters face, it has it all.
Where it fails is the underlying substance beneath all the glitter. The storyline doesn't progress until far too late in the movie to devoid me of the desensitization for the special effects.

And when you do start seeing bits and pieces of the story in between all the choreographed fighting, your reaction is either so what? or who cares.. until possibly the very end.
This movie simply tries to be too perfect. The first matrix was a better movie precisely because of its flaws , because of the cheesy dialog, because of the sparsely used special effects, because of keanu reeves' silly acting. but this movie seems devoid of any idiosyncrasy , it's all been glossed over and airbrushed to monotony, every character portrays only a limited set of predictable emotions (not much more than their supposedly "free will" lacking matrix generated enemies) and worst of all, all sense of novelty is gone until the very end, where we at last see a glimpse of intrigue - of something unexpected that we could not extrapolate ourselves from the first movie.
in short, the last 10 minutes of this film are what's important. and it's unfortunate that so much special effects and visual beauty are wasted in the beginning. i hope the third movie fulfills the prophecy of excellence offered by the last few moments of this second installment.