An unbalancing of action and story

Rating: 6/10 (10 December 2016)

Unlike the first film, this film focuses on the action rather than the story. The first film took time to give each aspect the attention it deserved and did it well, however this one doesn't seem as bothered about the story. The story itself is quite confusing and rather underwhelming, I got quite confused as to what was going on at times. The pacing is also quite bad at the start of the movie, taking ages to get into the actual story and just showing us stuff we don't really care about. Even though I don't like the fact that this movie prefers the action over the story, thankfully the action for the most part is great. The highway chase scene is a highlight and I loved every second of it- easily the best scene of the entire film. The way the events flowed and the way it was shot was great. Many of the other action scenes were pretty decent too, however there were some times where it didn't work as well like the Neo vs God knows how many Agent Smiths. The way the scene was shot was good and the way it flowed was also good but it was obvious that most of it was CGI and the scene seemed quite stupid at the end of the day. The ending is awful and ends completely out of the blue and feels extremely rushed with its unnecessary cliffhanger which tells you that this film was only made to set up The Matrix Revolutions, hence why they were released only six months apart. It basically says that this film was a two hour advert for Revolutions. In fact, after the credits there's actually a trailer for the next movie. So much for subtlety. With this film, I feel almost exactly how I feel with X-Men: The Last Stand; it's not a good movie, it's not a bad movie either, but it takes a huge dump on the franchise. It may seem like I bashed on this movie lots but I think it's alright at best. It certainly does have great action but the story is rather underwhelming and confusing and the ending is annoying. If you just want a dumb action movie then I would recommend this, however if you want a film as interesting and clever as the first then there's probably not much point watching this. 6.5/10 Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks it's stupid that Neo can fly.