The matrix (The Matrix (DVD))

Member Name: hashzip

Product:	The Matrix (DVD)
Date:	22/06/01 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good film

Disadvantages: expensive

In a gloomy, rainy, early 21st-century world, hacker Thomas "Neo" Anderson (Keanu Reeves, back in fine Speed-era form) spends his days doing meaningless software company drone-work and his nights breaking "every computer law on the books" in hot pursuit of the legendarily call-signed Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who claims to be able to explain some nebulous but possibly evil concept called "the Matrix" -- from which this movie, naturally enough, takes its title.

While relaxing at a techno/cyberpunk club, Neo is approached by a gorgeous woman wearing a black vinyl dress: Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), who tells him Morpheus wants to meet, and that Neo is being watched. This veiled threat turns immediate when spooky dudes in suits and Secret Service earphones arrive at Neo's office, take him into custody -- and then magically make his mouth sew itself shut, and insert a gross, skittering bio-technical "bug" into his body through the belly-button.

Clearly, as Morpheus later points out, the blase expanse of "real life" around him may not exactly be the known quantity Neo has always been raised to think it is. So should he take the blue pill, and wake up right back where he started? Or should he take the red pill, and pierce forever the mystery of "the world which has been pulled over [his] eyes"?

Since Neo gets offered this choice about half an hour in and The Matrix runs two hours plus, however, I think you can pretty much assume he doesn't go for pharmaceutical number one.

And just what, as the cut-line goes, IS the Matrix? Well, that would be telling . . . and would effectively cut out what little conceptual guts power this latest exercise in pure, crazy, "graphic novel"-inflected cool from Bound writer/directors the Wachowski Brothers (identical twins Andy and Larry, who both got their start writing for Marvel Comics), to boot. Suffice it to say that, l
ike the Japanese manga and Hong Kong movies which form its closest counterparts -- the Wachowskis hired "wire-fighting" expert Woo-ping Yuen to teach their cast those insanely high-kicking martial arts moves -- it's told pretty much through pictures and poses, involves transcendental themes, and cultivates an atmosphere of paranoia based on the Buddhist fear that the world around us is nothing more than maya, illusion, bent on distracting us from scary but primal truths.

On the other hand, The Matrix is mainly also an exercise in outrageous style over substance featuring flowing trenchcoats, sunglasses at night, and LOTS of guns. Morpheus's merry band of hacker/freedom fighters includes veteran character actor Joe Pantoliano (Caesar in Bound), plus five other people whose main job description seems to involve standing around wearing color-coded clothes while scowling photogenically. Some prime Keanu-isms get spouted -- "I know kung fu!" he blurts out to Fishburne, appropos of nothin' much, at one point -- and there's a truly freakish North American crossover performance by Aussie actor Hugo Weaving (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) as Agent Smith, the Matrix's unstoppable defender of the faith, whose uber-flat, computerized accent must be heard to be believed.

But let's face it: If Neo, Morpheus and the rest of the gang ever actually DID succeed in destroying the Matrix, they'd have no place to walk around looking cool in. Which would suck. Must be why they left all that room for a sequel, I guess.

Summary: