| THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS |
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| After the rather mixed bag that was The Matrix Reloaded, Revolutions has a bit of ground to make up. Broadly speaking, the main problem with its predecessor was that after four years away the audience was hungry for bigger better Matrix kung-fu and gunplay. It did deliver, but failed to find an entertaining replacement for the action when the characters were not 'jacked in'. Dull sub-Star Trek meetings, exposition and lots of dancing made it pretty hard to care one way or another whether the Zionites were ripped apart by the Sentinels or not. Thankfully Revolutions eclipses both the previous Matrix movies. The scenes within the Matrix itself are as stylish and cool as ever, while the battle for Zion is awesome, rivalling the beginning of the Clone Wars in Star Wars Episode II for scale; but grittier. The pace of the movie shames the second instalment too, no painfully dull exposition-heavy, look-how-hard-life-on-Zion-but-at-least-we-have-our-freedom bits here. The grim and gritty battle is a great contrast to the super-cool virtual-world martial arts. Keanu Reeves continues to look really cool throughout, and critics of his acting seem to me to be kind of missing the point with Neo. He's clearly not intended to be that bright. He's struggling to keep up with the dastardly machinations of the Machines just as much as we are. The scene where he confronts the human possessed by Agent Smith illustrates this perfectly. The guy is doing a spot-on Hugo Weaving impersination, and nobody else calls him Mr Anderson. "Who are you?" Neo keeps pondering. Maximum plaudits, once again, to Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith though. He's created a fantastic character. Neo arrives back in the Matrix for a final showdown with Smith, the follow-up to Reloaded's "Burly Brawl". Smith has assimilated thousands of people into his image. "Welcome back, Mr. Anderson. Do you like what I've done with the place?" he growls. Most of the negative comments I heard about this movie were that too much is left unexplained. Personally I applaud the Wachowskis for resisting the usual tendancy towards pat endings and neatly tied-up threads. I suspect as well that generating years of discussion about what it all means will help secure classic status for the trilogy. An awesome movie, major improvement on Reloaded, and a fitting end to such a seminal franchise. 10/10 |