The Matrix Reloaded - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

The first time a full length feature film was successful enough to warrant a sequel was back in 1916 when The Fall Of A Nation was made during the infancy of cinema. Since then, countless films have spawned sequels, prequels, spin-offs and trilogies of all kinds, some of them expanding the original film in new, exciting and fantastic ways, some being among the greatest films of all time. Others could be considered atrocities of cinema. Nevertheless, with the success of the original Matrix film, Warner Brothers handed a blank check to the Wachowski’s and asked for more. And more they gave us, four years after the original, we got The Matrix Reloaded. While at its heart this is an action film, there’s a lot of really good world expanding material that took the remarkable first film and showed us it was just a small part of the story. Critics weren’t blown away, but after Neo, Trinity and Morpheus save the day in the first Matrix, all that mainstream audiences wanted was to see those clips Reloaded and to see our heroes back in action, and boy did it deliver.

SYNOPSIS - The film starts out with a sequence of Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) riding a motorcycle into a building guard shack, then being chased by an agent around inside the building before jumping out a window and getting shot on the way down. Neo (Keanu Reeves) wakes up to find he’s only been dreaming, but it’s the same one he’s been having and feels a terrible sense of foreboding about it. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and his crew head into the matrix and meet with the leaders of other ships to discuss the threat of a robot army that’s tunneling down to Zion, to destroy the last human city. While in the meeting, The Agent formerly known as Smith (Hugo Weaving) knocks on the door and sends a message to Neo saying that he was set free, right before three other Agents break in and fight Neo. After Neo kicks some ass, they unplug and head home where we get our first glimpse of the underground cave city of Zion and the wild rave parties that take place there. But when Neo goes back into the matrix to visit the oracle, she directs him to visit the Merovingian and get the key maker, a man who can get Neo into where he needs to go, to see the Architect.

If all of this sounds a bit confusing, don’t worry, it is. Once you finished watching all three hundred cars that Chevy/GMC contributed to the movie’s production get shot up, smashed, flipped, blown up and totaled, you’ve filled your daily action quota. Action aside, in it’s efforts to blow people’s minds like the original, Reloaded relies on overly complicated dialogue and monologues from characters that end up creating a sort of confusion induced aura that leaves you wondering what in the hell you just watched and what it all meant. But the Wachowski’s screenplay and direction end up being a double-edged sword in that they allow some wonderful world expansion and do some new and creative things inside this universe, but some of the dialogue is truly horrific. The soundtrack has some rocking tracks, the stunts are second to none and the visuals are very good although the Neo/Smith fight has really not aged well. In the end Reloaded shows us the rabbit hole does indeed go much deeper, but this is the first time we feel uncertain about where we’re heading.

SUMMARY - While the issues with the screenplay and convoluted dialogue bog the film down a bit, there’s still plenty of technical elements and visual aesthetics that make the film a satisfying watch, and for those looking for just a quick action fix, this film hits it out of the park. But for those hoping a sequel would live up to or surpass it’s predecessor, most still continue to wait, now long after The Matrix was Reloaded.