‘THE Matrix” is a bug-eyed blast, a slick sci-fi thriller with spectacular special effects and hellzapoppin’ action sequences among the most memorable ever put to film.
A more technically dazzling synthesis of action choreography and cutting-edge computer graphics has not been seen since James Cameron’s “T2.” “The Matrix” will do enormous business among genre fans alone.
But that script – oy!
You expect screenplays for movies like this to be striplings on which to hang flashy action and visuals. “Matrix” suffers from the opposite problem. The Wachowski brothers, twentysomething writer-directors whose last feature was the Sappho-vs.-the-Mob drama “Bound,” have jammed so many interesting but half-baked ideas into their overlong (two hours-plus) picture that none of them gets a satisfactory workout, and in fact they gum up the storytelling.
It’s difficult to discuss “The Matrix” in detail without revealing too many of its mysteries. Its narrative pleasures come from the striptease revelations about the true nature of the Matrix of the title. It has to do with the nature of reality, but, like the press notes say, “No one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”
But I can, in good faith, tell you this much: The hero is Neo, a mild-mannered hacker geek played by the android-like Keanu Reeves. He is inadvertently drawn into a dark underworld when a strange voice in a phone call warns him that he is being pursued by baddies. After a “Men in Black”-type squad captures him and performs an exotic interrogation, Neo falls in with a shadowy group of cyber-rebels and is spirited away to their hideout.
Their leader is Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who gives Neo the choice to learn the truth about the world he inhabits and be initiated into their cell or to remain blissfully ignorant. Of course Neo chooses truth, else there’d be no movie. He undergoes a brain-frying (his and ours) “rebirth” – “tumbling down the rabbit hole,” it’s called – that’s brilliantly phantasmagorical.
Neo then begins a Luke Skywalker-like apprenticeship under Morpheus, learning the rules of the game and how to use his cool new powers to fight the “MiB” tyranny ruling the planet.
The Wachowskis don’t always follow the rules they establish for themselves (bullets, for example, hurt people – except when they don’t). And the performances leave something to be desired. Overwrought direction turns chief Man in Black Hugo Weaving into a bus-and-truck Tommy Lee Jones.
It is, however, very easy to overlook this movie’s faults when confronted by the razzle-dazzle visual effects the Wachowskis pioneer here.
The actors dodge bullets, leap over chasms, engage in terrifically choreographed (by Yuen Wo Ping) martial-arts sequences – all of which are presented with breakneck speed, visual seamlessness and breathless realism from unusual points of view. It’s like animation come to three-dimensional life, and f/x addicts as well as sci-fi fans will not want to miss a split-second.
