Review

Review Date: 9-November-03
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Junk

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

"The Matrix Revolutions" is a bad, silly movie. If it appeared on its own without an established chop-socky, pseudo-philosophical reputation behind it, the film would surely fail as a poorly envisioned, highly derivative, and entirely unnecessary clunker. As it is, with the expectations of pop culture fulfillment riding high, it comes across as a cursory, even campy spoof of its predecessors. Were it not for the fact that Keanu Reeves mud wrestling in a long black coat fits my definition of erotic fantasy, "The Matrix Revolutions" would have given me nothing in the way of entertainment but periodic fits of the giggles.

The movie opens with a whimper as it extricates our hero, Neo (Reeves), from the not-quite-real, not-quite-fake realm into which he stumbled at the end of "The Matrix Reloaded." This involves a prosaic shoot-'em-up and a tedious bunch of non-characters, old and new, who appear just to tie up loose ends and render the first half hour utterly dull and superfluous. Following a brief visit with The Oracle (now played by Mary Alice due to the untimely death of Gloria Foster), the focus shifts to the grungy underworld of Zion, where the plucky human rebels brace themselves for the final showdown with their former masters. As Neo and his beloved Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) head off on an apparent suicide mission to the machine city, the now marginal Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) accompanies old flame Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) to Zion, there to face complete annihilation or miraculous triumph with the rest of his species.

Things start to get somewhat interesting in a rainy-day, cable-channel-matinee kind of way when the battle finally begins. The siege of Zion doesn't break any new ground (riffing on video games, "Alien," and all dumb action movies with crusty bastard commanders and clean-cut boys transitioning to manhood), but nifty images of the evil, swarming "sentinels" keep boredom at bay. Of course, this fight is only half of what the audience came to see; so soon after setting off on his quest, Neo comes face-to-face (sort of) with his arch enemy Agent Smith (played at first by Ian Bliss in imitation of Hugo Weaving), the renegade former computer program whose hobbies include self-replication, sneering, and the pursuit of global destruction. (Sorry, ladies, he doesn't cook.) This early smackdown — the rivals' first meeting of flesh and bone — whets the appetite for their ultimate, definitive confrontation.

But, alas, this hunger is never satisfied. Before the climax, Neo must endure extreme suffering (some of which, unfortunately, invites comparisons with "Daredevil," an even worse movie than this one), and during the climax, the audience must endure extreme suffering. Gone is the exuberant élan that made Neo's clash with Smith in the previous movie so enjoyable, or even the minor sense of urgency and mystery that flavored the action of the first film. Instead, the payoff of "The Matrix Revolutions" is nothing but a laughable, almost insulting pastiche of low-grade comic book visuals (Weaving waving his fist in fury, lit by a lightning bolt), short on the patented Wachowski flair but long on their characteristic abstruseness, in which Neo has to settle for an assist even as he fulfills his destiny of making the world safe for Zion, Morpheus, love, peace, children, kittens, rainbows, and, uh, other cool stuff.

At least I think he does — I'm not fully clear or concerned about how it all ends. What I do know is that "The Matrix Revolutions" discredits the mythological and cinematic renown accumulated by the first two films, which (considering that Lucas' epic trilogy met the same fate) is only going to make Peter Jackson's impending triumph all the more impressive.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.