Better than Reloaded, not as good as the original

Rating: 7/10 (6 November 2003)

It was a bit slow and talky psudeo religion stuff at the beginning of the film - a remnant from the last one, and this didn't bode well. But then, after about 10 or 20 minutes, it heated up with a couple of good scenes. These were both homages to scenes in the original Matrix - a fight in an underground station and a blantant rip off of the lobby scene.
Then it got a bit talky again, whilst they all discussed what to do, but then... The big battle sequence for Zion happened, and restored your faith in this franchise. This seqeunce is worth the price of admission alone, even if it did get a bit confusing due to all the minor characters that had been introduced in the last film having bit parts and roles to play, and you couldn't remember who was whom. Great homage to Alien, and also to Aliens [marines fighting against interminable odds] and Star Wars [an obvious plot point and a couple of very subtle references]. Oh, and Neo wasn't in the film for 20 minutes, which meant that you had people who could portray more than one emotion on screen. Even Morpheus became more human during this sequence.
Then there's the final ending to the film, which I won't give away. But I will say it was a bit of a cop out - Matrix the TV series anyone?
Oh, and the battle between Neo and Smith [well, one of the Smiths anyway, and I don't mean Morrissey] was a little dark and hard to tell what was going in in some places.