The Matrix Revolutions
(2003)
review by Head Cheeze

Like the endless strings of binary that hold it's artificial world together, The Matrix: Revolutions is long, boring, and redundant. Of course, it's tough to be the spawn of one of the most influential films of all time, especially when your best special effects bits are being convincingly aped in Heineken commercials. A victim of it's own ground-breaking ways, The Matrix has lost it's wow factor. When we first entered it in 1999, it was like peeking through the looking glass into a world that defied the laws of physics, threw out the rules of cinema, and reinvented the action film. Now, looking through that same magical mirror is about as exciting as watching someone cutting the lawn.

Revolutions begins where Reloaded left off; Neo's (Reeves) in a coma, and Trinity (Moss) , Morpheus (Fishburne), and a gaggle of newcomers set off on a mission to bring him out of it while The Matrix's sentinels make their way to Zion. Meanwhile, Agent Smith (Weaving) has taken on human form and now resides in Zion. There's very little by way of a coherent story, even less so than Reloaded, relying, instead, on one loud fight scene after another to stretch the film out to the two hour mark.

It's so obvious that both Reloaded and Revolutions could have easily been fused into one film, and a better film at that. While Reloaded was remarkably short on logic and dialogue, Revolutions seemingly skirts them altogether in favour of explosions and tedious battle sequences that get tiresome almost as soon as they begin. Had the filmmakers simply taken the two skeletal scripts, picked the most interesting action sequences from both films, and combined them into one sleek package, then, perhaps, The Matrix series would have gone out on a high note. Instead, they're not only beating a dead horse, they're dragging it around the track with a rope in hopes we don't see just how dead it really is.

The performances in the series continue to decline into nearly robotic fare, with only Reeves turning in anything close to a reasonably human performance. However, it's fair to note that he's the only one given anything interesting to say. Morpheus, whose most amazing attribute seems to be his ability to get fatter by the second, continues to be Neo's butt boy, spewing forth his Neo-love to anyone who'll listen. I literally chuckled every time he showed up on screen in anticipation of yet another speech about how Neo is "The One". His character has degraded into nothing more than the Matrix equivolent of that guy you know who insists he was a fan of Nirvana before "they sold out".

Weaving's Agent Smith has it slightly better, although he's essentially become the Elmer Fudd to Neo's Bugs Bunny. Everytime the two meet, one half expects an ACME safe to fall from the heavens and crush the other momentarily. The showdown between Neo and a zillion Smith's offers up nothing new, save for the fact that one wonders why in the hell they all don't just rush Neo and beat the snot out of him at once. As a matter of fact, that sort of logic applies to the whole series. Instead of sending a bunch of sperm-like robots down to Zion, why doesn't The Architect simply nuke the place? As a matter of fact, if he saw all of this coming, as we are led to believe, why didn't he have the foresight to simply smash Neo's skull open when he was born? We're told that, for The Matrix to exist, there must be a Zion. Why? So that the filmmakers have an answer to all of the above questions, of course! And, if they can't answer your question, they simply blow something up to divert your attention away from the massive holes in their logic.

I read somewhere that Revolutions is to The Matrix what Return of the Jedi is to Star Wars, but, to me, that'd be giving it too much credit. Sure, Jedi sucked, but at least it made an effort to tie up loose ends. Revolutions simply ends without answering a damned thing, and it's open-endedness screams sequel. However, I seriously doubt folks will be standing in line come the next batch.