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A Nick and Nora Charles for the new millennium, they are making a pilgrimage. Whether or not you really care to tag along will depend on your fascination for the outlandish. In that respect, this eye-popping outrage from the Brothers Wachowski (Andy and Larry) certainly pushes the envelope. Granted, much of it is gobbledegook. But it is unusually consistent gobbledegook. And very often entertaining if you allow yourself to get swept up in its world.
In the not-so-distant future, machines have taken over our civilisation, enslaving all but a small band of very hip, computer wiz revolutionaries. Rebuffing their covert activities at the behest of mechanical powers that be are sinister Agents, Men in Black with superhuman powers: i.e. just for starters, they can dodge bullets. Okay, so the renegade freedom fighters make a Beatniks-without-the-bongo drums fashion statement. And the techno-babble tends to run at the mouth a bit. But like a larcenous salesman with a great gift of gab, The Matrix has its silver-tongued moments.
Fast-paced and chock-full of ceaseless battles for survival, with a plethora of kung fu fighting thrown in just for good measure, this is the ultimate roller-coaster ride. And it wends its way through Paranoia-land in a hail of bullets the likes of which you haven't seen since Rambo.
What could be more frightening than the notion that we don't really exist, at least not the way we think? A full understanding of The Matrix's multidimensional plot would probably require a master's in VCR programming. But here's a layman's understanding, which should prove obscure and gruesome enough: Attached to cables and hoses and living in pod-like structures, we are in reality relegated to a semi-hibernating state, cultivated as a mere energy source for the machines that turned on (and then subjugated) us in the late twentieth century. Our last act of civility was to scorch the ozone layer, ostensibly depleting the supply of solar power. The payback is that now we're the batteries in the flashlight, the pigs in the pen.
Virtual reality is the new opiate of the people. To ensure our complacence, computer software programs pumped into our deluded brains have us believing everything is hunky-dory in 1999, supposedly the pinnacle of our civilisation (hey, that's now!); before everything went kablooey. Fact is, it's more like 2199.
But this is no way to live. Keanu Reeves as Thomas Anderson, the perfectly unlikely hero of the tale, questions this horribly pathetic reality. That is, after he discovers that it is indeed reality. A mild-mannered computer programmer by day and a mind-altering, software-pushing hacker by night, in Cyberspace his sobriquet is Neo. Through his on-line altar ego Morpheus, captain of the renegade ship Nebuchadnezzar, eventually contacts him for enlistment. You see, Morpheus, played with forceful fantasy by Laurence Fishburne, consulted an oracle (a black woman living in the projects, whimsically played by Gloria Foster) who assured him that there did exist a special someone who could lead humanity out of bondage. Presumably, Neo is "The One", if you catch the tale's messianic drift.
In fact, the brothers Wachowski are particularly fond of religious reference. They throw a whole bunch of spiritual allusions in the hopper, like so many numbered Ping-Pong balls at a Bingo game. Then they gleefully pull them out as it suits them, in no particular order. They have a lot of fun with it, and so will filmgoers, as long as they don't ascribe any real importance to the theological mumbo-jumbo.
The acting in this live-action comic book saga matches the various textures of the story with notable acuity. Mr. Reeves as the ordinary guy who, as mentor Morpheus notes, "has fallen down the rabbit hole," is winningly credible as he morphs through the looking glass and evolves into the film's Ninja warrior combination of Odysseus and Rocky. Quietly rooting for his success is Carrie-Ann Moss as dangerously fetching Trinity, a member of Morpheus' merry band of bohemian revolutionaries and a martial arts expert extraordinaire. In a story almost entirely bereft of romantic inclinations, Trinity is the film's curiously subtle nod to sexual tension.
Sci-fi with an attitude, The Matrix features a homecoming agglomeration of all the special effects and many of the science fiction concepts introduced during the last two decades. There's a little bit of Terminator II, a lot of Total Recall, and a healthy smattering of Dark City. Plus a respectful nod to a very important ancestor, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the dominant stylistic influence is a self-indulgence reminiscent of the apocalyptic moodiness evoked in Blade Runner.
For all its convolutions, beneath the metallic-slick exterior and heart-thumping, rap-music murkiness, The Matrix is conventional science fiction. Just as in Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, there is nothing less than world domination at the crux of its plot. And when it comes down to basics like the villain, always the indispensable ingredient of successful sci-fi, the Wachowskis deliver in the finest tradition of the genre. Hugo Weaving as the despicably condescending Agent Smith, bent on extracting the computer code of the underground's grand kahuna, Zion, from the Nebuchadnezzar crew, does Ming The Merciless proud.
True, the packaging has got a lot glitzier. And the seamless f/x quotient does lend a new credibility. But you see this movie not for its story as much as for its new age presentation -- as a boldly pretentious example of its times. For when it gets down to cases, even The Matrix's highfalutin immersion into the questions of reality seems derivative. After all, wasn't there an earlier science fiction writer who said something like, "To be or not to be, that is the question?"
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