5/16/2003 - The Matrix - Reloaded

As I sat in my theater seat yesterday afternoon, trying to ignore the endless procession of commercials and previews that were being forced down my throat, I was pondering how I was supposed to feel about The Matrix Reloaded.

In one sense, I had revelled in built-up anticipation ever since the two sequels of the Matrix were announced a couple of years ago. In another, I was fearful that it would be an ugly fall-from-grace for one of the most enthralling cult movies in cinematic history. And it's no mystery that sequels usually suck.

I knew I couldn't expect my universe to get rocked again like in the original Matrix. Fresh from the X-Men 2 viewing however (which was no doubt better than X1), I was semi-optimistic.

Yet almost from the start, "Reloaded" felt different from the first episode — more action-oriented, mechanical, geared-for-blockbuster. And no doubt this was in no small part due to the fact that the Wachowski brothers had a significantly more generous budget to work with.

While the flow of the story seemed a logical continuation of the previous movie, it appeared bogged-down by longer, more frequent and elaborate fighting and action scenes. Keanu Reeves is quoted as saying: "I've got five fights in the second one and I have more moves in the fight with the Smiths than I did in the whole first movie. Probably twice over." Unfortunately, the whole thing comes out feeling a bit too much like a video game, with each major scene representing a new level in the game, generating new martial arts adversaries and more obstacles to overcome.

And that really is the big problem with "Reloaded": clearly, the pressure was on to out-do the original - make it grander, even more sensational - and the directors chose action scenes to achieve that - sadly not realizing that the true and tantalizing allure of the original rested in the mind-bending philosophical questions the story posed.

True, there is the Architect scene, where Neo gets to the source, the inner core of the Matrix, and is told that everything he thought he knew about the system is wrong. Yet the Architect's convoluted monologue lacks the simple and compelling character that Morpheus's speech had when he first revealed the Matrix to Neo, and we're left trying to grasp what the Architect really meant when he talked about choice and free will versus destiny.

That said though, "Reloaded" is an astonishing technological achievement, with excellent special effects that will keep even the most attention-deficit challenged guy on the edge of the seat. Special mention must be made of the excellent Ducati bike race, the dreadlocked albino twins that can turn themselves into ghosts and beam from place to place (not unlike X-Men 2's Nightcrawler), and the fighting scene with the Smith-clones.

As far as characters go: Reeve's Neo undergoes the interesting transformation from wide-eyed hacker-boy to Messiah. He learns that his mastery of the digital Matrix makes him master of all mankind, and that with this gift comes great responsibility. Deliciously, his christ-like character is also visually enhanced by an exquisite long black frock with a high clerical collar that will no doubt send fashion-fiends scrambling for a knock-off.

Although penalized by many critics as "an actor who makes Brent Spiner's Commander Data feel like Deepak Chopra", I thought Reeves managed to gracefully preserve his character's humanity with bouts of fear of failure, and a tender love for Trinity - all the while exhibiting superman-powers like flying through the air at supersonic speeds and battling an army of agents simultaneously.

Trinity is still hot as the kick-ass chick in the black latex fetish wear, and a wealth of new characters (among them Jada Pinkett Smith, and curiously, middleweight-turned-heavyweight boxing champ Roy Jones Jr.) successfully put a human face on Zion. Morpheus, on the other hand, gets swept up in his fanatical dedication and belief in "The One", and turns into a lackluster character you don't really care about anymore. Equally dull are the flat and unthreathening Euro-villans, who unlike Cypher from the original movie, couldn't scare a mouse away from its french cheese.

Noteworthy is also that "Reloaded" is a lot more racier and sexier than its predecessor - shortly after our first introduction to the city of Zion and a booming address by Morpheus ("Tonight, let us tremble these walls. This is Zion — and we are not afraid!"), there is a scene where the whole cave-like gathering place turns into a huge rave hall, with Zionites orgasmically thrashing their sweaty, scantly-clad bodies in slow-motion to the throbbing rythm of some goth tech tune - intercut with a steamy, yet tasteful love scene between Neo and Trinity.

In the end, beneath all the philosophical mumbo-jumbo and excruciating dissection of the bigger meaning of the Matrix's message in vast amounts of websites, there is still one reality that nobody seems to mention: It's an action movie. It's entertainment. It's big bucks. And it's worth seeing.