It won't please everyone, but the anime & comic book fans should be happy.

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2003)

(Minor spoilers - nothing that wasn't in the trailers)
The Matrix trilogy is such a massive hybrid of film genres, but more importantly it has drawn on different ones for each part. The overall enabling concept is science fiction for all three; the first adds HK wire-fu and gangster guns to that; the second adds a james-bond-like mission complete with car chase; the third goes into fantasy epic territory as well as the high-power superheroics that started in part 2.
My main gripe is with the amount of very grave dialogue that surrounds the battle scenes. It all seems very out of place, but i couldn't really pick exactly why at first. After seeing the movie again at the opening I realised why this dialogue kept reminding me of Star Wars or even LOTR - the characters were all speaking that kind of heightened, melodramatic dialogue that you're only used to hearing in high fantasy or old comic books. Having met these characters in the (ironically) more 'realist' world of the matrix, it's a bit off-putting. Cheese tastes better when you're expecting it.
So my main advice to anyone who hasn't seen this film is to watch at least Reloaded immediately beforehand and to remember that from the end of the first Matrix there was every indication that this story was borne out of a love for superhero comics and anime. The parallels between Revolutions and Neon Genesis Evangelion are many - armageddon and battle-mechs in both! The Superman as Jesus thing is brought to its logical conclusion here. As far as movie trilogies, think Return of the Jedi with a more ambiguous ending and no Ewoks (that should be recommendation enough!). It's also the first time we've seen a big mech battle in live action as well as topping Superman for the old-school superhero battle.
My only other criticism is how Christian it gets by the end. There is an attempt to incorporate Hindu religion early on, but the Eastern influence seems a bit left out by the end. That said, they did an amazing job trying to incorporate several thousand years of philosophy from around the world into one big metaphorical construct. But when you're doing armageddon, that's the realm of religion not philosophy.
Any of you people who complain about brainless Hollywood action movies start whinging about "all that boring talking" in the Matrix trilogy should be condemned to the hell of the endless Devlin/Emmerich film festival.