Still bloated but not without its merits

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2007)

This'll be kinda stream-of-consciousness. I'm just gonna get all my thoughts out without really organizing.... Definitely a step above Reloaded, but that ain't saying much, is it? This movie was nowhere near as disappointing as that one, but it still had plenty of flaws.
The first hour is slow and needless (for that matter, the entire second movie was unnecessary in the grand scheme of things). There's a scene at a fetish club that has no reason to be in there except to try to recreate the lobby scene from the original, only far less interestingly. The entire role of the Merovingian - that entire plot line - what was the point of that? It was completely superfluous and didn't play any real part in the end. But in the second hour, the redeems your ticket price.
Some reviews complain that the leads all but disappear for a good half hour while we watch the supporting players defending the Zion invasion, trying to return to Zion, etc. The fact of the matter is, this was the best part of the film. I cared more about these people than the main characters. When we got back to Neo and Trinity, I was actually disappointed. Much of this movie felt like a video game: big action scenarios linked together with slow, questionably-acted cut scenes of dialogue. The final battle with Agent Smith and Neo? Cool enough - a true superhero slugfest, but dragged out and repetitive, much like Reloaded's "burly brawl." And the end? well, I won't spoil that for anyone, except to say.... that's it? All this led up to THAT?!?