A future worth fighting for
Yes, "The Matrix Reloaded" delivers phantasmagoric visuals. But it also introduces a new level of grown-up human passion into this saga of technology and salvation.
By Andrew O'Hehir
May 15, 2003 | On one level, the universe of the Matrix movies is the same as it ever was: For most viewers, most of the time, "The Matrix Reloaded" will be nothing more or less than the coolest action movie of the summer, an ultra-high-tech blend of Hollywood black magic and jaw-dropping martial arts expertise, with Keanu Reeves as the baddest Shaolin monk ever to kick ass. But on another level, the level of dense and intense geekdom -- the level of Philip K. Dick references and Jean Baudrillard quotations and the apocryphal teachings of a noted Jewish heretic prophet born in Bethlehem 2,000-odd years back -- all has changed, changed utterly.
So what do we learn in Andy and Larry Wachowski's second installment about the war between the human race and the machines that keep 99 percent of humanity imprisoned and enslaved, keep it living out "real life" in a highly sophisticated set of software programs whose simulated world strongly resembles, well, Western civilization circa right now? Of course I shouldn't tell you anything at all about what we learn, or even drop any hints -- and the Wachowskis have made that task easier, because the real answer to the question is: not all that much.
"The Matrix Reloaded"
Written and directed by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski
Starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gloria Foster
"The Matrix Reloaded" is a defiant middle-chapter movie, maybe even more so than Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." It begins with no prologue or back-story whatsoever and ends on a virtual cliffhanger. (If you're new to the series, take the red pill and watch the first movie first. Remember: There is no spoon.) In between -- and in between the mind-blowing action scenes and special-effects set pieces, which, if they can't possibly match the revolutionary impact of the 1999 original, outdo it in terms of sheer spectacle -- the Wachowskis give us a hell of a lot more questions than they do answers.
In other words, at least some fanatics will be disappointed in "The Matrix Reloaded," despite the freeway chase sequence that lasts almost a quarter of an hour, the awesome teahouse fight scene that pays homage to all the classic kung fu movies the Wachowskis have undoubtedly absorbed or the hand-to-hand combat between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and a clone army generated by the nefarious, and increasingly mysterious, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). On the whole, the Matrix saga seems to be moving in the direction of doubt rather than quasi-religious certainty, toward becoming a metaphysical puzzler rather than a clear-cut fable of salvation and redemption.
Maybe that's why I found "The Matrix Reloaded" so exhilarating. It's a sadder, wiser, more grown-up movie than its predecessor. It was made, one might almost say, for a sadder, wiser, more grown-up world. (Remember that in the first film Agent Smith refers to the band of renegades led by Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus as "the world's most dangerous terrorists.") More than that, it introduces a startling new sense of humanity and passion into the Matrix saga. It's not fair to suggest the Wachowskis ever seemed like cold filmmakers, exactly; their passion for moviemaking and storytelling, their desire to thrill an audience without condescending to it, were always obvious. But in "The Matrix Reloaded" they take the time to show us what Neo and his tough-babe squeeze Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and über-cool guide/guru Morpheus and the rest of the human rebels battling against the technocratic enslavement of the Matrix are fighting for. It's not the awesome designer leathers and sunglasses, the Porsches and Ducati bikes; as cool as those things may seem, they exist in the Matrix, which is to say they don't really exist at all.
Early on in the film, Morpheus whips the inhabitants of Zion, the underground city where the last band of human rebels have their stronghold, into a frenzy. The agents of the Matrix have finally located Zion, and a dreadful army of 250,000 Sentinels -- those scary, dreadlocked killing machines from the first film -- is burrowing down through the earth, on its way to destroy the city and annihilate the free survivors of the human race. But Morpheus does not rouse the citizens of Zion for battle, although a final battle is close at hand. He wants them to party. The machines have been trying to kill them for years, decades, he reminds them, longer than anyone living can remember: "But we are still alive!"
What follows is a thunderously exciting all-night multicultural rave, an ecstatic dance party the likes of which I've never seen on film before -- intercut with a hot 'n' sweaty interlude between Neo and Trinity, who've been struggling to find some Q.T. together amid the impending apocalypse and hordes of strangers who want Neo to bless their babies. One of the marks of genuine genius in the Matrix films, I think, is the way the Wachowskis manage to have it both ways so much of the time: They can make a box-office-busting action spectacular that is also an explicit critique of media-age capitalism and a lefty-Christian parable. They can turn a sex scene between two movie stars with fabulous bodies into a celebration of the sheer sensuous delight we all share (or should share, anyway) just at being alive, experiencing the world with our own bodies and our own minds.
