The longer it runs, the more it stays in the same place

Rating: 4/10 (3 July 2003)

It seems ironic to me now that I should refuse to watch any of the LOTR movies because I couldn't be bothered with over-lengthy, CGI-infested, fantasy movies; having sat through what felt like at least 9 hours of the Matrix Reloaded, I'm thinking that the Tolkien would have been the easier option...
OK, maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh. This film does have some stunning action sequences and some genuinely imaginative cinematic viewpoints and effects. I just couldn't help thinking that it would have been so much better if they had concentrated on the plot, rather than trying to win on sheer scale. There is precious little humour to leaven the pomposity and faux-philosophising that seems to have infected the entire cast and the overall effect is false and alienating. When we are presented with the last vestiges of the human race in Zion, it would be nice to feel some sense of identity with them. Instead, the scenes of mankind's final evening before the massed sentinals attack is about as comfortable as a Nuremburg rally.
Unless we find in the third installment that the joke is how like the machines mankind has become, the lack of warmth or humanity in the film is disturbing. Yes, there are the assorted love interests, but in each case, the participents come across as motivated more by self interest than their partner's wellbeing (it's all "how will *I* be affected when you die a horrible death in the line of duty"). There's precious little here to make us care whether mankind survives or falls, which makes the film appear unpleasantly abstract and heightens the sense that all the discourses on the meaning of self and identity have become so much empty posturing. Peel off a mask on one of these characters and you suspect that you'll have a clear view to the back of their head.
Finally, and perhaps most irksomely, the film doesn't seem to advance either the characters or our understanding anywhere near enough to justify its runtime. You could get the important scenes, with enough action to keep most fans pretty damned happy into a one hour TV special, including adverts. Hell, at a pinch, you could condense all the real information that you're given about the Matrix, it's creator and it's purpose into the space that Star Wars gave to describing a galaxy far, far away and tag it on to the beginning of the final movie.
Disappointing? Damned right...