Ignorance is bliss! (The Matrix (DVD))

Member Name: tairrie

Product:	The Matrix (DVD)
Date:	08/12/00 (21 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a definite must-see, story, setting, special effects, actors, music....

Disadvantages: not really

If you haven't yet seen the film, you should definitely do so. It's one of my favourite films! A short summary of what to expect:

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is working as a programme writer for a big software company. In his other life he is a hacker known as "Neo".
For quite a while he has had the feeling there is something not quite right with the world we live in but he hasn't found out what it is. So he is looking for an answer to his questions. All of a sudden, strange things happen around him. He is contacted by a wanted terrorist named Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) who offers him the answers he's been looking for. But sinister agents are following Neo.
When Neo decides to join Morpheus and his group, he finds that nothing he has been taking for granted for all his life is actually real, everything is controlled by "the Matrix". Neo now wakes up to a horrifying truth about what the Matrix is.

I don't want to give away too much of the content so I have to stay rather vague here. The film combines stunning special effects, suspense, action, kung fu and a very intelligent story. The film deals with reality, consciousness and whether what we think is real actually is. So apart from the entertainment value you could say that it is interesting philosophically, too. I've even included bits and pieces of the film in a term paper on "Questions on Identity and Consciousness" in uni. But don't worry, it's not boring at all. (and Keanu Reeves in a long black coat and tight black clothes should also be a convincing argument for watching it - at least for the girls...) ;-)

The actors do a brilliant job there, too. All of them. One of the evil agents, in fact THE evil agent is played by Hugo Weaving whom some might know from "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". It took me quite a while to realise it was actually the same man. So he must have played t
he bad guy very convincingly.

Settings and costumes are absolutely cool if you like it dark, black and squalid. And the soundtrack is also brilliant, a mixture of dance, industrial, punk and the like.

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