Seventh Gate - Contains Spoilers

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2003)

Spoilers herein.
Summer action movies come in two types: there is the Bruckheimer model where the setup can be explained in 5 minutes and there are no story complications to get in the way of the action. Sort of like porn. Then there is the genus that depends on complex cosmologies with the story revealing and elaborating as it goes. Possibly `Star Wars' was the first example in filmdom, I don't know. Harry Potter and Rings are recent examples. These cosmologies tend to be pseudoreligious only because religion provides ready templates. Science fiction book series in this tradition tend to have controlling layers that are continually discovered beyond apparently ultimate layers. This story is in the Macroscape/Berserker/Snowcrash tradition and you can expect some revelation in the next chapter of a higher power past the seventh cycle.
This chapter was more choppy than the first, and less dark and edgy. But they do know the magical effects of photographed black skin. And along those lines, they have and use Fishburn, a real actor, possibly our best African-American film actor. They do know how to play visual jokes: turning Monica Belluci into a cow; poking fun at the Terminator movies with the cheesy highway chase; goofing on Superman and such. Some will enjoy just that stuff, some will not.
The part I liked was the complexity of the levels and the cinematic acknowledgement of same. Nominally, there are two worlds: the world of (computer-generated) illusion and the `real' world. Some entities in each world can visit the other, and the action shifts between the two. But we have the two worlds of the viewer and the (computer-generated) film as well, and the Brothers have us shift between being IN the action and WATCHING it. This is famously denoted by the bullet-time effect where we are in the world of the action and then the action stops (or slows) and we enter viewerland where we move around to get a better view. Another example is in the architect's room where we zoom into one of the images on the wall, shift layers and find ourselves again. Another is the construction of pilot/watcher/programmer, intended to give us the illusion of some control: the viewer has free will also. Yet another is the appearance of what must be the most elaborate transitions in flmdom.
But wait. Each of those pairs of worlds has a metaworld of their creators as well, worlds which we are on the verge of realizing. And each world also has rogue beings or angels and demons of various types. If the formula holds, we may see allegiances of these shift in unanticipated ways. That includes the world of the Wachoskis, here denoted by the albino demons. Very likely, all architects will have architects and all saviors saviors and all a matter of the chink between free will and `fate.'
I thought the set design very clever and well thought out, especially when compared to recent blockbusters. Many have complained that the temple/nightclub was unimaginative. But humans ARE trivial, tasteless and hedonistic, and that's part of the joking wink at the audience. No one escapes the matrix.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.