Nothing Revolutionary

Rating: 4/10 (30 April 2004)

The third installment of the Matrix trilogy comes to a close as a bright new `created' sun rises over a city skyline. Fortunately for the movie audience that just sat through Matrix Revolutions, this `sign' signals the best part of the movie-the end!
The Matrix and it's sequel Matrix: Reloaded were loaded with eye popping, unbelievable special effects and an evolving, fast-paced, cyber-punk story that caused audiences to think. Somewhere between Reloaded and Revolutions the creators of this trilogy forgot about what made the first two movies so special. Instead, they turned it into a blazing gun fight (literally) between man and machine and turned the story into a marsh-mellow, sappy, inconclusive, meandering, insipid battle of good versus evil. It's almost as if the producers of this movie `dumbed it down' because the first two were over the audiences heads.
This movie makes about as much sense as three single men marooned with two hot single women on an island and no one ever has sex and no one is ever jealous. That's right, The Matrix Revolutions is right up there with Gilligan's Island in terms of making sense and making use of an `unimaginable reality'. Revolutions settles for `cute' when they should have been `sexy'. They settle for `biblical' when they should've been `mythical'. They settle for `War' when they should have focused on `turmoil'. Basically, they settled for Mrs. Howell when they should have gone with Ginger!
Keanu Reeves, who seems perfectly cast as the monotone, savior, Neo, is back in the third installment acting more like a cross between The Professor and Gilligan than a kick-butt, able-to-defy-reality-hero we've come to know in the first two movies. Suddenly, he's like a kid who's constantly asking `why?' and like an exhausted parent, we get annoyed. This is his journey, his 40 days and 40 nights in the desert coming to terms with who he is and why he is. But unlike Christ or Moses from the Bible and Old Testament, his journey isn't that interesting. Locked away in the world between the Matrix and reality, his quest is fairly tedious and seems to distract us from the movie instead of advancing the story.
There is really very little that advances this story. It moves along with the expected gun-fights and anger without ever moving forward. Throughout the first two movies there was a thread that kept the stories from spinning off into the ether of stupidity. That thread was that there was something `real' to the stories. The emotions, the actions, the characters all seemed to be steeped in reality allowing us to believe in them and the story SNIP! Kiss that thread goodbye! Revolutions has no desire to maintain that. Like a video game that malfunctions, we find ourselves slamming the arms of our chairs as if they were a game-pad, as we curse the screen to get back to where we were.
All in all, this is a bad video game. The special effects remain amazing, and for that reason alone, I'm glad I saw this in the theater. But like most video games it's all about an action sequence that leads to another action sequence with no concern for story. The characters pass by too quickly in this tale of `faith' and perseverance in a cyber-world gone horribly awry. Even Lawrence Fishburne is reduced to somewhat of a minor role as he and Jada Pinkett-Smith exchange steamy glances. Two characters from Reloaded: Merovingian and his busty companion Persephone make a brief appearance, but they don't really serve a purpose. We visit the Oracle again and we're introduced to some creepy looking train conductor who is dead-set against Neo getting on board the train! But that whole point just comes and goes with little effect on the movie.
Meanwhile, back in Zion, the BIG WAR is waged against the tentacle monsters from the machine world. This battle is fought with man-powered mechanical suits with HUGE guns and gutsy women with bazookas. The war turns into an old-fashioned `give em Hell' John Wayne type of event. Ripe with a hard fighting, never-say-die leader, who spits out orders and cheesy dialogue nearly as fast as his guns empty of ammo. The fighting is epic and again, the special effects are fantastic, but somehowthis should've been in a different movie. This seems to go against everything else the Matrix movies have been about: The computer-generated world, the small band of `resistance fighters', an agent who is like a virus detector in the system, control of when to be `plugged in', intense, cliff-hanger type skirmishes and a reluctant hero fighting against logic and reason to save the world
While the Matrix and Matrix: Reloaded were focused and intelligent, this one seems to try to cover too much in too short a period of time. There's Neo in `limbo', the impending attack on Zion, the counsel of Zion and the angry General, Morpheus and Niobe, rescuing Neo, preparing for battle, the love story of Neo and Trinity, Agent Smith, the WAR, the land of the machines, the multiple Agent Smith's and his ability to `assimilate' his enemies, the list goes on and little of it is done well.
Revolutions provides nothing revolutionary. We've seen all this before in countless action-no-in countless war movies with better story lines and much better dialogue. I think more than anything, that's what really disappoints me. The fact that the first two movies seemed so fresh and cool, everything about them was new from the dark look to the fight scenes and the bad-ass sunglasses. Revolutions reverts to an old-fashioned movie about war and remembrance, almost as if it was meant to be attached to something else. This movie leaves us wondering `what could have been'? Like, what if the Skipper ran off with Ginger to the other side of the island and the professor and Gilligan had to fight over Mary Ann!