EDGE Boston :: Entertainment

Matrix Reloaded
by David Foucher
EDGE Publisher
Thursday May 15, 2003

Those Wachowski brothers - innovative, explosive, and downright smart - are at it again. Like The Matrix, they have proceeded quietly from virtual unknowns to revered oracles, every whisper landing on the ears of the celluloid intelligencia like hidden truths. We are all asleep, they murmured in 1999, and a subculture was born.

Unfortunately, that’s a little like founding a religion on the lyrics of a rock band (has it been done? You know it). Film is entertainment, and even a six hour dissertation on free will cannot serve to exhaust the topic; what it can do is launch the discussion. The Wachowski’s Matrix Machine, by rights, should have at its fingertips merely the capability to make us think.

Instead, we are handed religion in the form of a video game.

The Matrix Reloaded is more video game than film, in fact. Parts of the movie are so heavily dipped in CGI that the characters lose dramatic cohesion; they serve to run and fight, not to think and express emotions. It’s ironic that on occasion the actors playing computer programs feel more lifelike than Keanu Reeves and his compatriots.

The story returns us to the world of the Matrix, wherein 99% of humanity sleeps, enslaved to the power needs of machines that have already won the war against living tissue. I won’t restate the occurrences of Episode One, primarily because if you haven’t seen the movie you should give over the thought of seeing this new chapter. In fact, if you haven’t seen The Matrix repeatedly, or at least within the last month, you step off at a disadvantage - the Wachowski brothers give their audience no time at all to assimilate, review, or comprehend on the way to Episode Three (due out in December).

Even if you ARE a Matrix expert, however, it’s likely you’ll need to see this flick twice or more - particularly the spellbinding, but hopelessly convoluted and talky, climax of the film. And it lacks the unique panache of the first film; we’ve seen many of these tricks before.

Nevertheless, The Matrix Reloaded is a veritable masterpiece. The plot is essentially thus: Neo (Reeves), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) are launched on a mission to destroy the Matrix mainframe before an army of nasty machines descend on the last human city of Zion and wipe out what’s left of the fragile human population. To destroy the mainframe, they must open one all-important door; to open the door, they must get the key from a "keymaster" under the Control of some dude named Merovingian.

Oh - and along the way they have to blow a lot of stuff up.

In true Matrix style, not everything is as it appears, and the plot fooled even this experienced critic on its way to binary madness. The are even a few moments of intellectualism handed to us - a short re-visit from Gloria Foster as the Oracle, and a wonderful short diatribe from Merovingian, played to excess by Lambert Wilson.

From the point of view of an action film, The Matrix Reloaded doesn’t disappoint. The effects are glorious, the camera trickery superb and the pacing quick. But you get the sense that what you’re seeing is happening TOO fast... and you start to get the feeling that the film is racing along for a good reason - and it has nothing to do with keeping the running time down.

The truth is that The Matrix is more fashionable than meaningful. As a part of pop culture, it leads the genre. As a statement on the spiritual state of mankind, it’s reaching way too far. If you take the film as a fable, and enjoy it for its ingenuity and speed, you’ll come away from The Matrix Reloaded feeling thrilled at the train which just ran over you. If you attempt to work this trilogy into a personal mantra, you’re likely to let a piece of entertaining nonsense define your world - and what better definition of the Matrix is there?