The Matrix
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Movie Reviews of The Matrix
Movie Review: Simulacrum and Simulation
Summary: 5 Stars
WARNING: This review contains spoilers! DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM!
Every once in a great while a film comes along that changes everything and revolutionizes the way films are made. It happened with Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Steven Spielberg's Jaws, and George Lucas' Star Wars... now we are given Andy and Larry Wachowski's The Matrix. The Matrix not only has a cool, cyberpunk, hyper stylized look and jaw-dropping special effects, it also features an intelligent story that is often overlooked by the mindless action junkies. The story unfolds at a feverish pace while we, the viewers, are given the thrill ride of a lifetime.
Thomas Anderson worked a menial desk job at a major software company. In his spare time he leads a double life as Neo, a computer hacker, and it is as Neo that he gained the attention of some very strange people. One night, after falling asleep in front of his computer, Neo wakes up to find a message flashing on the monitor. "Wake up, Neo... The Matrix has you... Follow the white rabbit. Knock, knock." Not two seconds after reading this message, the door knocks. It's only one of Neo's friends stopping by to pick up a disc, or is it? Neo notices that his friend's girlfriend has a tattoo of a white rabbit on her shoulder, so naturally when he's invited to go to a rave he agrees out of curiosity. Once there, Neo is overwhelmed by the blaring rock music, the flashing strobe lights, and he's just considering leaving when a beautiful woman dressed in a slinky black outfit approaches him. She introduces herself as Trinity, a name that Neo is already familiar with. She's an expert hacker and an ally to Morpheus, a mysterious man that the authorities are after. Trinity tells Neo that he's in danger, that she understands him and his growing feeling of disenchantment, that she can help him, and that Morpheus can answer the question that's been eating away at his subconscious: What is the matrix?
The next morning Neo wakes up and realizes that he's late for work. When he arrives there his boss lectures him saying, "You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken." After his reprimand his day only gets worse. He receives a FedEx package containing a cellular phone, which immediately begins to ring. When he answers it he hears, for the first time, the voice of Morpheus. "I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately you and I have run out of time. They're coming for you and I don't know what they're going to do." Over the phone Morpheus gives Neo instructions to on how to escape the building without being seen, but Neo fails to follow these instructions. He's taken into the custody of several strange agents, who interrogate him and plant him with a "bug".
Neo wakes up the next day believing that all the events of the previous day had been a dream, until he gets a phone call from Morpheus who cryptically tells Neo that he is "The One". They agree to meet at a safe location. When Trinity picks up Neo, she asks him to lift his shirt because she thinks he may be "bugged". Trinity reveals a large, awkward, high tech contraption that she uses to locate and remove the "bug". She then takes Neo to an old deserted building where he finally meets Morpheus face to face. Morpheus asks Neo if he wants to know the truth about the Matrix. He explains that no one can be told what the Matrix is, that they have to see it for themselves. Morpheus produces two pills and then offers Neo a choice: Take the blue pill and his life will return to normal, but if he takes the red pill Morpheus will reveal to him the mystery of the Matrix. Neo, with a little hesitation, takes the red pill and his world begins to dissolve, literally. The next thing he knows is that he's naked, covered with cords and wires that are plugged into his body, and that the vat of amniotic fluid he's been sleeping in is suddenly drained away, pulling him down through a series of tunnels and depositing him in a lake of waste. A large airship comes to his rescue and removes him from the grimy water. When Neo reawakens, Morpheus tells him that his entire world, his entire existence was fabricated, that he had been subjugated by an illusory reality designed to keep him compliant. The real world turns out to be a nightmare and the nightmare a reality. In the real world, the machines have long ago developed artificial intelligence, and taken over the surface of the planet as they use human beings as their energy source. The Matrix, as it turns out, is nothing more than an elaborate set of programs meant to deceive human beings so that the machines may parasitically feed off their semi-conscious bodies. Neo's life has been an empty dream world... but there is hope.
Morpheus has been leading a band of freedom fighters who live in the real world and hack into the Matrix through a pirate signal, to free humanity from the clutches of the machines. Morpheus tells Neo of a techno-mystical prophecy that one day a man will be born who will liberate humankind and end the war between the living and the mechanical. Morpheus trains Neo to become their champion in a virtual reality simulator, where Neo learns martial arts. He is also taught how to adapt his mind so that when he next enters the Matrix, he will be able to fortify himself for protection as well as bypass the laws of physics (mainly gravity). But they also face great obstacles, both in and out of the Matrix. In the real world they must deal with Sentinels, robots that are squid like in appearance and armed with a deadly arsenal. Within the Matrix, there's the threat of the Agents who eliminate any dissenters. Of these Agents, Agent Smith is the most dangerous for his programming was flawed. He is capable of experiencing human emotions such as ambition, pride, and a general contempt for all organic living things. Soon Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity have begun a revolution from which there can be no turning back. They will either end the tyranny of the machines or be crushed in the attempt.
The concept that our perceived reality is a mere illusion is by no means revolutionary. Since ancient times, philosophers and scientists have suggested the possibility of alternate realities which are only accessible through the mind. What makes The Matrix so fascinating is that it combined this metaphysical idea with modern technology, contemporary politics, social counterculture, and martial arts action. The film also has an underlying spirituality and frequently makes references to world religions and mythologies. The iconic characters are played to perfection by a talented cast including Keanu Reeves as Neo, Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, Joe Pantoliano as Cypher, and Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Though it was released in 1999, The Matrix has often been cited as the film that ushered in the new millennium. It is a high energy, thought provoking modern masterpiece.
Also recommended:
Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s
The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film
Metropolis
2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Wars Trilogy
Blade Runner
The Terminator
Brazil
Dark City
The Matrix: Music From The Motion Picture
Movie Review: Action movie disguised as science-fiction delivers the goods
Summary: 5 Stars
Beginning this review I was writing the film's title and ended up with "The Mainstream" (100% accident) which pretty much sums up the premise of The Matrix franchise. The Matrix is good in the fact that it takes complex science-fiction from previous 1990s films that didn't quite meet mainstream audiences (Dark City, 12 Monkeys) and merges it with the spectacular CGI effects of an action film. As an action film The Matrix is incredibly successful and deserves great recognition as one of the best films of the 1990s, or the past two decades for that matter. However I do feel let down by the fact that I felt cheated by the story when they didn't try to further flesh out the world it took place in.
My main problem with the film falls on the fact that, as an avid sci-fi fan, I had already seen most of the concepts The Matrix presented in previous films (go back to the two I listed above). The religious spin on things however does really make it interesting, kind of like a science-fiction version of some religious document, but a human being having special abilities and saving a captive human population from a controlling force which had everyone living in a false reality had already been used in Dark City back in 1996. This, among other things, is one of the reasons I don't give The Matrix a perfect score of 10/10.
As a sci-fi film it was very good, regardless of how many of the elements that it was reusing from other films, but I often felt like the production team couldn't decide on whether or not they wanted an action picture, or a thought stimulating sci-fi epic. By the end however The Matrix does succeed in balancing these two things very nicely. The CGI deserved its Academy Award, because it really is amazing some of the things they were able to pull off.
The acting in this film was grade-A, and one of the strongest aspects of the film's production, and there was only ONE performance that failed to catch my attention...sadly this performance (my opinion) came from the star of the film: Keanu Reeves. Reeves has had his moments throughout his career, don't get me wrong, back in the late 1980s (most will remember the Bill & Ted films) he was a rather likable young actor, even in his lesser known performances; he seemed very honest and sincere in his performances. A change came about when he announced he was going to "take acting more seriously". The result, in my mind, was horrific! He comes across now as someone with very little emotion, and just doesn't seem really human.
I had the same problem with Keanu in the action movie, Speed, which followed the Die Hard franchise, but unlike Bruce Willis, I couldn't connect, or really care about Reeves in this film (similar feeling in Bram Stoker's Dracula, but he wasn't TOO bad in that film), which was certainly on par with the Die Hard films in production and story. Same problem is present in The Matrix. Reeves is trying way too hard to seem serious, and dramatic, and in the end comes across as being artificial, and dull. If that was the director's intention, I don't really care, because I felt this was a character the audience should have been able to relate to and care about, but that's just my opinion and you don't have to agree with me (just giving an honest view from my perspective).
Okay, I've given my criticisms, but now I have to say what was really good about The Matrix, and there are a lot of good aspects of this film which is why it deserves my high rating (and a spot in my DVD collection). The action is well-done, and truly is an eye opener, and as I previously stated the performances are mostly strong. Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus) and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) are very good in their respective roles, and both (as most people will say) are embraced as engaging characters in the mind of the audience, while Reeves was more of a vehicle to channel elaborate action sequences (the highlight, in most people's opinion, of the film). Also the Wachowski Brother's film is simply beautiful to look at, from the all CGI sequences to the live sets. The sequels, which go purely into action, prove that this film could have been a much worse (I don't hate the sequels, they just are not really sci-fi; just action films).
This film really does have all it needs to work as a successful film, especially in the mainstream Hollywood of this day and age. It would have been braver for the filmmakers to try and expand, and concentrate on the complex science-fiction aspects, instead of the action, but then it wouldn't have been the box-office success it was. I would defend them no matter what, but when you go against the powers if mainstream and the production companies and end up with a good film you'll always have me backing up your film...of course I will be critical if the plot and direction is bad, but at least I'll give you a positive word for daring to be different.
I can only hope that The Matrix can help get moviegoers into the lesser known art-house science-fiction stories that inspired it, because it's a shame that our modern audiences can't seem to appreciate things that don't fuse with action or comedy, because I don't feel science-fiction was ever really intended to be a genre simply designed to create exciting action sequences.
The Matrix was a great film, deserving its mainstream applause: Solid 9/10 stars
Movie Review: AND IF THE PROPHECY CAME TRUE? WHAT THEN?
Summary: 5 Stars
It's 1999. The worls is about to experience an event that will in many ways, determine the parameters of popular art within the realm of the most popular and influential of the popular arts, the world of Commercial Film. With THE MATRIX the Wachowski brothers create and present a perfect example of what the Sci-Fi Adventure film of the hypothetical future would be in the actual future. THE MATRIX, though perfectly self-contained, and received with enthusiasm by the public, would demand a sequel. The Wachowskis would quickly provide two of them, and these subsequent films would amaze audiences by not only fulfilling the plot and motivatIon factors of the original story, but by becoming in unforseen ways, movies deeper, more profound and intellectually demanding; in other words, superior to the template from which they sprang.
It all begins with the pulsing of a cursor light on an unattended computer monitor screen.
Question: What if you woke one day to find and to follow a sequence of remarkale evnts that led to the realizaion that the world around you, including all your most intimate associations, those given to you by your senses, was merely an illusion, a construct desined to control you, subliminally, for the beneift of un-alive, half-beings fundamenally unlike yourelf? What would you do? What could you do? What if all this were "a world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." What then?
(1) Would you quit your Programmer job?
(2) Would you Join a band of cyber-space rebels? What if you were invited into it by someone irresistably attractive?
(3) What if the doping, pleasure-driven Web rebels knew you only by your Net pseudonym, and accepted you totally for what you only partly believed yourself to be? Could you accept them?
(4) What if the leader of the Web rebels believed in you and your destiny, devoutly, and showed you that he'd been for most of his life dedicated to your appearance, and what if he were able to show you both your orignis and your destiny? Would you believe and follow him?
(5) And what if this man, this dangerous outlaw, believed you were the savior of "the world" or, of Humanity?
(6) And what if he were able to show you in a convincing way, what reality was, and how you were trapped in the lie of it?
(7) And what if he were to introduce you to a clairvoyant who, though socially inappropriate, read the future? Would you accept her message?
(8) Would you, as one of the fugitive band of time-travellers beyond the Matrix, join in a battle with the mechanized forces of the Matrix itself? Would you confront it's terrifying and powerful agents? At he risk of your life?
(9) Braving discomfort, bad food, and sensual deprivation, would you risk your identity and your ideal self to battle against the authoritarian agents of the Matrix?
(10) And would you risk everything for someone who believed in you absoluely, and loved you beyond anything you'd peviously imagined?
(11) And betrayal? It is inevitable. Will you be able to face it and survive?
Phrophecy is funny: People only talk about it, when they talk about it, to show they don't believe in it. Mark of a decadent age. A lack of moral imagination is the hallmark of decay. Weep, my friends. But, a voice speaks through the modem. It says, "I know you are out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afrid of us; afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this will end. I came here to tell you how this is going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone and I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm gong to show them a world without rules or conrols; without boundaries; a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is up to you."'
The Wachowski brothers who produced this film are said to hail from Chicago. In that city adults tell children that the (arctic) climate builds character. Perhaps it may. Adversity has strange offspring. Who knows what may, or may not have come out of that brutally cold, utterly corrupt but quintessentially American city?
Movie Review: Reveiw # 3,013
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been a Matrix "fan" for as few years now.....it is one of those "classics" you never get tired of. It is a movie moved by meaning & powered by purpose. The music is great, as are the special effects.....my favorite scene of such is when the helicopter impacts into the side of the building. And while this is movie is sci fi fantasy.....it offers deep insight into the reality of our illusion.....or is it the illusion of our reality ? lol ....you decide if you dare....many are afraid to peer deeply into the construct of our conscious reality....i suppose they are afraid that their reason will unravel.. This is a movie with a message, & it says...
Ours is the world of the smoke & mirror where few are truly as they appear...& we are shuffling through life with zombie feet looking for someone alive to eat....yes, it IS a dog eat dog world, a monkey see monkey do zoo where you hate me because i hate you...you see.....we are as ants in a bottle of belief...captives of consciousness...as
Our captors have surreptitiously corrupted our collective conscious code...so now everyone is primed to either emotionally implode or explode.
In case you have not realized, i suggest everyone is hypnotized.....& share a collective psychosis imparted via media mass hypnosis.
....make no mistake, you are anything but truly free or fully awake. We are drifting in the stream of a collective nightmare dream....oblivious to the obvious as we sink into oblivion. We are kept in a trance to work dance & sing like puppets on a string as our captors enjoy the show & dont do a thing. Realize it or not, you have been compromised in thought & collectively suffer from PTSS - post traumatic slave syndrome....& compulsively try find your own private dictator to rule your mind. You see, you have been set up psychologically to accept the unacceptable....outright open slavery. Yes, there is a plan to openly enslave every man. So they tricked us into enslaving ourselves 1st.....by re-programing you to think & act your worst. Everyone...is compulsively participating in every manner of self destructive pattern of behavior conceivable. & they, in vain ego denial, choose to believe they willingly smoke drink gamble drug eat & sex themselves to death, & that they can quit anytime they want ...but their corrupted code will not let them want to quit killing themselves .....so everyone is compulsively committing slow suicide one way or another.
But no need to panic & go manic as there is an escape from the mental rape. All it takes is an intercessor of advanced awareness to provide the turning of a key inside....right now....I send a gentle electromagnetic shock into your forehead between the brow....this surge will unlock your mental block....& so your minds eye will now begin glowing with otherworldly knowing...& the circumference of your understanding will begin exponentially expanding. Soon, you will see with xray vision eyes & without conscious effort express thoughts deep & wise. So...Wakey wakey....snap snap....time to wake up from your lifelong nap....
...and step out of your unconscious cage of rage, open your eyes & consciously realize the rest of your lives.
Movie Review: Stunning Visuals and Enduring Themes Stand the Test of Time.
Summary: 5 Stars
Watching "The Matrix" more than a decade after it was made, my first thought was to how well the film stands the test of time. Granted, it has only been 11 years. But ideas about cyberspace have become more sophisticated, just as they have become a part of the daily lives of more people. The internet has become indispensable and mobile, whereas it was more esoteric in 1999, when "The Matrix" hit movie theaters. The cell phones were bigger then. People still had hard lines. And "hacker" had not yet become synonymous with Eastern European cybercriminals. The word still conjured up images of a sort of amateur insurgency in cyberspace that sought out information about hidden worlds. That is what the hackers of "The Matrix" do.
It begins with two voices speaking over the green glow of a computer monitor. "Are you sure this line's clean?" one says, hinting at deception. Then to Earth's dystopian future, where a beautiful hacker clad in black vinyl, possessed of seemingly superhuman abilities, fights with police and flees federal agents to a phone booth, where she disappears. After that jolting introduction to stunning, dark production design and gravity-defying martial arts, we are transported to more familiar territory. A sleepy hacker has dozed off, when his computer appears to send him a message. "Wake up, Neo," it says. And "Follow the white rabbit,", which he does. He follows a punked out young woman with a white rabbit tattoo to a loud party where he will meet his destiny.
It was quite an opening. Larry and Andy Wachowski, who wrote and directed "The Matrix", relied on imagery and ideas that the viewer would recognize to bring us into the world of the Matrix, while they created a truly beautiful cyberpunk aesthetic that audiences would not soon forget. "What is the Matrix?" is the nagging question that will drive Neo (Keanu Reeves) to discover that his world is not what it seems. He is a prisoner of illusion, a slave of an enormous system of inhuman machines. Kind of abstract for an action movie. But "The Matrix" cyberpunk tone, its stunning visuals, combined with themes that have variously been interpreted as socialist and capitalist, Christian and pantheist, postmodern and crassly commercial, give it staying power.
A decade later, perhaps it has more meaning when a federal agent calls Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), fugitive hacker and hero of the rebellion, a "terrorist". And now that the Info Wars are upon us, the idea that hackers will save the world by revealing its hidden recesses, is either all the more naïve or all the more likely, depending on who you think will win. Politics and post-modernist themes aside, any viewer who was unhappy with his or her job could, then and now, relate to the drudgery of the Matrix. It's one of those rare, good, character-driven actions movies that has wide audience appeal. And it would be a mistake to underestimate the power of the film's beauty, courtesy of cinematographer Bill Pope and production designer Owen Paterson. That's what keeps bringing me back.