Matrices made interesting

Movie review of "The Matrix" trilogy.
Published on facebook.com, 21st October 2007.

The Matrix
One of the few good films I was lucky enough to know absolutely nothing about when I walked into the cinema, and got totally blown away.

Reeves slightly less bogus than usual, more guns and special effects than you can shake a big stick at, and an stunning woman in the form of Carrie Ann Moss, clad from head to foot in black PVC. Damn. All this wrapped into the sci-fi conspiracy theorists's wet dream. Marvellous.

Action, plot, decent character development and believable situations despite the implausibility of the plot...although is it really that implausible? After all, we are an arrogant species that rarely considers "should we" as much as "can we"?

The Matrix Reloaded
Bigger, louder, and kung-fuier than the original with the addition of a number of new characters who inhabit the matrix as rogue programs. The love story is slowly developed between Trinity and Neo, though the Matrix theory gets slightly muddier with the elusively ambiguous 'Architect' and the beginning of the sequence of events that demonstrate the connection between Neo and Agent Smith and the trilogy's ultimate crescendo one film later.

Hugo Weaving steals this one I think. "Me too."

The Matrix Revolutions
The last of the three. Hated it when I first saw it at the cinema right up to the point when I realised there was never going to be any way in which the sequel could replicate the "aha" moment of the first film.

That said, the Zion inhabitants do a good enough job of delivering a whopping body count in the final grand battle, and most captivating of all is the climax (so to speak) of Neo and Trinity's love story. Again, Weaving does a great job of erring to be almost human, a characteristic seen the first time during Morpheus' interrogation scene in the first film. And what a great scene that was by the way: "...this zoo, this prison...it's the smell!"

A satisfying end to the set of three although one wonders how they ever got the financing to make a film, "...about an unbalanced equation." The DVD has some excellent bonus features that have the effect of making one appreciate all the subtleties of casting, costume, sound, and the fact that the theory on which the movie is based is real, published, and even earned the writer a cameo role as one of the Zion counsel. I forget his name though.