Truly Godawful, the Letdown of All Letdowns

Rating: 1/10 (7 November 2003)

The first 15 minutes hinted at a great finale; great fight scenes, brisk pacing, and the immediate appearance of one of the cooler characters: Seriph. Plus, the whole concept of Neo trapped in a limbo-like subway station was genius.
From there, it's like the movie fell off a cliff. Endless, and I mean endless, dialogue scenes by secondary Zion characters, spouting bad Star Wars dialogue. Endless scenes of The Council, another embarassing Star Wars/Star Trek-type contrivance (who dresses these people)? Dumb characters that didn't even appear in the first two in any appreciable way--most notably the 16 year old puppy who gets to spout one of the most inane war movie cliches as he tries to get the commander to let him fight.
Finally the endless battle in Zion. At it goes on FOREVER. How many times can you see the sentinels being raked with machine-gun fire? This movie will answer that question.
Then the needless tragedy of a main character dying, which seemed pointless after how far this character had come. Neo gets injured in graphic, disturbing fashion, and then it's on to the final fight scene (and Neo's ONLY fight scene) with Smith, who by the end of this movie has become a caricature, complete with Dr. Evil laugh.
The final fight scene was nothing more than an exhausting exercise in what they could do with CGI. No cool Kung Fu skill or moves--just endless, in-your-face assaults. Totally ridiculous.
As for the ending itself--THIS is what we were being led to? Ridiculous. Everything about the first movie and a good part of the second--the wittiness, the cool questions unanswered, the idea of reality and what is real... are completely ditched in what can be best described as a rote, sci-fi hack job that may be marginally better than the new Star Wars movies, but actually pails compared to something like Starship Troopers. Sad. I couldn't wait to see this movie; I wish I never had.