Uneven movie, some dialogue insightful, some insipid.

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2003)

Best part of the movie were the special effects. The serpentine machines are wonderfully animated and the soundtrack is very intense and appropriate for conveying the might and threat of these machines. The settings (city of Zion, Machine City) are beautifully filmed, and you will be fully transported to another world.
**SPOILERS**
Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, the insidious computer program, is compelling and full of interesting thought somewhat prosaic computer-type observations (eg, love is just conjured from the feeble human mind). Smith is one of the few characters in the movie who isn't full of foolish platitudes and excessive melodrama. He's spiteful but in spite of his spite(?), his observations are more keenly expressed than those of the other characters. It seems as if two different writers wrote the script for Smith and the script for the other actors. Maybe it's because of this that most of the newer actors (Matrix Reloaded and later) seem to just blur together indistinctly.
I suspect that the interesting philosophical and existential musings throughout the film originated with the Matrix comic book series. I somehow don't believe the Wachowski brothers could have come up with these philosophical ponderings. I enjoyed them more than any other dialogue in the film. The observations of some of the other characters struggling so hard to sound wise come off as frivolous. The fact that they speak their lines with such a serious face nearly made me double over from laughter. Let's put it this way, these guys are pure cheese, whereas dialogues engaged with questions of existence, its purpose, and human nature are much more thought-provoking. I found this film to be nearly as uneven as Artificial Intelligence, though the unveven-ness is less readily discernible.