abysmal

Rating: 1/10 (8 December 2005)

Some of the shots in this movie cut together would make a great visual effects reel, and would be much more enjoyable than suffering through the entire film.
The writing is awful on every level imaginable. Dialogue is full of insulting exposition (characters explicitly describing their motivations and feelings for the audience) and centers around trying to explain things like discrepancies in the casting of the oracle due to the unfortunate passing of the original actress and why a slew of new powers/characters/areas of the matrix were invented in the 2nd movie.
They should have focused on larger problems like story sense. Morpheus's last line is, "I've dreamed of this moment my whole life", in reference to the bullet-loading kid explaining that the war with the machines is over. Did they forget that the principal reason they were fighting the war was to liberate imprisoned people's minds from the matrix? The twenty minute fight between Neo and Smith is pointless and feels pointless because it's been very clearly established that punching each other has no lasting consequence. There are lesser issues like this abound throughout the film but the real achilles heel of the story is as follows, starting with the 1st Matrix (a great movie):
Let's find the One, he will destroy the Matrix and free all the humans, Neo is the One, and he blew up agent smith! Bringing down the matrix and freeing all of our minds should be no sweat now. Wait agent smith is back and there a bunch of new haphazardly conceived obstacles to throw in our hero's path jeopardizing his quest to destroy the Matrix. Oh no, agent smith has embodied this guy Bane in the real world and the machines are attacking Zion, this complicates the quest to destroy the matrix. The machines are in Zion they're hurting the residents, but Neo sacrifices himself to allow agent smith to be destroyed, Zion will be spared! The End.
I would worship this movie if the credits started rolling right after the kid says, "the war is over!" and Locke says his line, "this doesn't make sense."