The Matrix Reloaded

Movie Title: The Matrix Reloaded
Official Website (it might still work): The Matrix Reloaded
Rating (out of 10): 7
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

Four years of anticipation. That’s right it was 1999 when The Matrix burst onto the scene with an action packed, special effects driven, sci-fi thriller with a strange message (though I would not say an original message since Total Recall had a similar message). Now Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity are back to continue the prophecy and save humanity from the machines. But as in the original Star Wars trilogy’s second installment, the bad guys make a come back, mostly in the form of hundreds of the evil Agent Smith.

This time the film begins with Neo (Keanu Reeves, Hard Ball) having a bad dream about his girlfriend Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss, Chocolat), but awakes before seeing it end. We soon learn that the war with the machines is still going on, but it looks a bit gloomy as the machines have sent 250,000 sentinels boring into the Earth straight towards Zion, which would bypass Zion’s defense system. The man in charge of the defenses, Commander Lock (Harry Lennix, Collateral Damage), wants all ships in the fleet to return to Zion for an all-out battle royal with the machines, but Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne, Biker Boyz) believes in the prophecy and thus elects to help Zion by fulfilling that prophecy. So after returning to Zion to recharge their ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, plus party and have some sex, Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and Link (Harold Perrineau) head back up to visit The Oracle (Gloria Foster). After visiting The Oracle, Neo discovers that he needs to find some guy named the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim, The Replacement Killers), plus he discovers that Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) is now a rogue agent that can replicate himself at will. Neo also finds out that there are competing programs in the matrix that are vying for power, but he should be able to fulfill the Prophecy by entering the mainframe and shutting down the system. The rest of the film is where most of the action takes place, as Neo has become a super-kung fu machine that can beat basically anything the machines can throw at him, plus now he can fly like Superman. Included in this is the oft mentioned freeway scene that lives up to expectations and sets a new standard that will take a lot of money to attempt to surpass (and you know many will try). Anything more and I’d give away a couple of key points that are best discovered on your own.

As with the original film, The Wachowski Brothers wrote and directed the film. Others in the film that were not already mentioned are Monica Bellucci, Daniel Bernhardt, Kelly Butler, David Kilde, Nathaniel Lees, Robyn Nevin, Jada Pinkett Smith, Neil & Adrian Rayment, Cornel West, Anthony Zerbe, Lambert Wilson as the evil Merovingian, Leigh Whannell, Malcolm Kennard, David No, and boxer Roy Jones Jr.

It has always been difficult to repeat the success of the original film with a sequel. The Matrix Reloaded is no different. For one, the novelty/shock value of the core principal of everyone living in a computer-generated world is long gone. Second, with such groundbreaking special effects the first time, it is difficult to do any better. Well the Wachowski Brothers are able to add a few things to keep it interesting, and they are able to improve upon the special effects. Plus they added a few well-placed jokes to make the film oddly humorous. Unfortunately though, the film just lacks the punch of the first one, is a bit slow in the beginning, and is even a little predictable. So, far from perfect, but not anywhere near being bad, this installment receives seven couches on the About-Movies.com scale.

PS There is a trailer for Revolutions after the credits, but I didn’t find it worth sitting through five minutes of credits for a short 30-second trailer.