The Matrix: Revolutions

with Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss
Directed and written by Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
(Warner Home Video)
by Chad Van Wagner

Just to get this out of the way, The Matrix: Revolutions was a bit doomed from the start. The Matrix: Reloaded wasn’t exactly the answer to everyone’s prayers, and all …Revolutions existed for was to wrap up a story that wasn’t that impressive.

So it deserves credit for, at least, not being boring (mostly). That’s about it, though, as the problems from …Reloaded have only been amplified. The chattiness has given way to spotty wrapping up of loose ends, the forced analogies seem even more flat now that they’ve reached their conclusion, and the action sequences…

Well, the action sequences are impressive, in a basic sort of way, but still too much. The constant SFX one-upsmanship gets tiring very quickly, as in the final confrontation between Neo (a remarkably lifelike Keanu Reeves) and Agent Smith (the good, but underused, Hugo Weaving). As in the confrontation in …Reloaded, the excruciatingly long battle is just plain repetitive. The intensity builds, sure enough, but not in a particularly interesting way: The punches thrown hit harder, but that just means that the recipient flies 50 feet instead of 30. Yahoo.

Again, the Wachowski Brothers deserve credit for building a whole universe unto itself, and it is well thought-out, if not particularly well executed. I’m still left with the unsettling feeling I had before: This is just a better Johnny Mnemonic. Which, it must be said, is not exactly praise.
(www.thematrix.com)