The Matrix (1999) * * * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1999 by Serdar Yegulalp
"The Matrix" is a movie that one goes into for a special-effects ride, and comes away from with a story. In today's Hollywood, that's something to write home about. It dazzles, it entertains, and it even provokes a bit -- it's got at its core some remarkably soulful themes, including the question: who among us are heroes, but those that simply stand up when the moment arises?
The movie features Neo (Keanu Reeves), a computer enthusiast whose day job may be in danger because he spends too many of his nights hunched over his computer, illegally swapping files with other criminal digerati. Some of them are a little more high-flown than others: Apparently a near-godlike superhacker named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) has been urgently trying to get in touch with him. He eventually does so -- through a cell phone that arrives by Federal Express (!) -- but Neo doesn't understand why Morpheus is so fixated on him. Eventually Neo and Morpheus do meet, and...
And at this point I hesitate to say any more about the plot, because one of the movie's grandest pleasures does not deserve to be ruined through a review, but if you wish to know more, read on. Neo's world of skyscrapers and computers literally doesn't exist -- it's a digitized fiction fed to him by direct neural input. He and the entire rest of the human race are living like pickled plums in vats of organic goo, kept sane through the illusion of reality while their brainpower and bodily energies are "harvested" by... well, things that certainly aren't human.
Whew.
The plot warps onwards. Morpheus and his band of hackers break Neo out of his prison and show him the real world. More than that, they also give him the tools to fight their war back inside the Matrix -- the name for the computer-controlled illusion that the rest of the human race is still living inside. Morpheus is convinced that Neo has power over the Matrix that no other human being has, but Neo is less quick to believe. Sure, he's fascinated by his potential (there's a hilarious scene where he gets "downloaded" various martial arts), but also unnerved by it. After all, A), if what came before wasn't real, how is *this* any more real? And B), who's to say that what they say about me is true, regardless? "The Matrix" does a nice job of confronting these ideas.
What "The Matrix" does best, however, is entertain, and I regret not spelling this out sooner. This is, simply put, one of the most visually transcendent movies ever made. When we see Neo and his gang engaged in a gun battle, it's not just another action sequence: it's a metaphor for what's going on in the hero's minds. And in a way, a reflection of what we would all like to do, in a way: reincarnate ourselves as superhuman fighting machines on a war to save humanity from mental slavery. That's what makes it more than just an action film -- its action furthers a larger agenda.
The evil of the Matrix is emodied in the forms of the Agents -- AIs that take on human form (and look, predictably, like MIBs). The most deliciously sinister of the bunch, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), seems like a mouthpiece for the Matrix in general -- he's not just coldly disconnected or indifferent to humanity, the way the Borg in "Star Trek" were, but outright disgusted by it. Smith has a great scene with Morpheus where he spells out his revulsion in terms that only an AI could love.
What I liked best about "The Matrix" was how it satisfied so many levels of the audience's attention at once. It's the only successful cross-pollination of John Woo gunplay, techno-wizardry, Phil K. Dick-like meditations on the nature of reality and destiny and wall-crunching, ass-kicking martial arts I know of. Such is the nature of cinematic innovation in 1999.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews