Walking into The Matrix: Revolutions, I was prepared to be disappointed. I'm one of the many people who found The Matrix: Reloaded to be pretentious, with a few good bits of action peppered in between the nonsensical speeches. Thus, I expected to go home shaking my head, thinking, "How could this series start out so well, and end so badly?" Imagine my surprise, then, that Revolutions isn't that bad.
In fact, to a certain extent, this is a pretty good movie. There may not be a frantic car chase or that infamous fight between Neo and the million clones of Agent Smith, but Revolutions is able to properly balance its high-minded philosophy with a healthy dose of thrilling action.
If you haven't seen Reloaded yet (or haven't seen it since May), you may want to check it out again. There is no help from the Wachowski Brothers, the writers and directors of the Matrix trilogy. Revolutions picks up right where the last film left off. At the end of the second film, Neo was in a comatose state, next to freedom fighter Bane, who had been inhabited by Agent Smith. Also, Neo found out from the Architect of the Matrix that there had been multiple versions of the Matrix before our hero came along.
It turns out that Neo isn't in a comatose state. He's inside the Matrix, but only sort of. He's in a train station that is the connecting point between the real world and the fake world. No matter how hard Neo tries to leave, he can't. The only man who can let Neo leave is that swarthy Frenchman the Merovingian. Of course, if you remember, the Merovingian was left in a tight spot at the end of Reloaded, so there's no love lost between him and Neo. Eventually, though, due to some tough negotiating (or a gun to the head), Neo is brought back to Zion, the land of the freed humans. Once there, everyone prepares for the final battle between the humans and the machines.
Also appearing in Revolutions are such mainstays as the Oracle (albeit in a different form, because of what she did in the second film) and Agent Smith, who once again faces Neo down in a thrilling climax to close out the Matrix series.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that, if nothing else, the third Matrix movie features some great special effects and equally entertaining action sequences. The highlights are the aforementioned fight between Neo and Agent Smith, and a half-hour sequence where the Zion freedom fighters attack the Sentinels with machines straight from Aliens. Thus, John Gaeta, the visual effect supervisor and one of the men behind the whole "bullet-time" effect, is the real champion of these movies for pulling off such fantastic feats.
Frankly, all technical aspects of The Matrix: Revolutions deserve commendation, from the set design to the cinematography. If there's one thing the Wachowski Brothers know, it's style.
Surprisingly, the stylishness isn't the only thing worth talking about here. Hugo Weaving, while being woefully underused here, steals the show as the flamboyant, snakelike Agent Smith. His line delivery is so unique that it's almost humorous to hear the actor portraying the inhabited Bane impersonate Weaving. Even the way Agent Smith says "Mr. Anderson" is enough to chill your blood.
Also, Mary Alice, replacing the late Gloria Foster as the Oracle, does a fine job as the confusing yet charming fortune teller with all the answers, it seems. Lambert Wilson, as the Merovingian, may only be in one scene but he makes the most of it. Every line of dialogue is like food to this guy. He hams up his role, and it helps that he's got an impressive French accent.
But there are problems here. Revolutions is more flawed than you could imagine. For me, the biggest problem is that Laurence Fishburne, given one of the most interesting characters in The Matrix, is now no longer Morpheus, Neo's mentor. Now, he's Morpheus, the co-captain. He may have about fifteen lines of dialogue here, and that's just not fair. It's one thing to give Fishburne the shaft in the second movie, but to relegate him to a background in the third movie is criminal. Perhaps if the Wachowskis hadn't kept adding new characters, like Jada Pinkett Smith's Niobe, we don't give a hoot about, this wouldn't have happened.
And since Morpheus is a most unimportant character in Revolutions, we're left with two-thirds of the three main characters in the first Matrix: Neo and Trinity. Some people will complain that the love story between Neo and Trinity is hackneyed and contrived, and that there's no passion between the two. I disagree. If we've learned anything from the laws of romance, it's that people who have compatible personalities are likely to find themselves in a healthy, long-lasting relationship. Neo and Trinity, conversely, have no personality at all; they're perfect for each other!
I will cut Carrie-Anne Moss, she of the burning stare and low voice, some slack because she was in Memento. That has nothing to do with Revolutions, but Memento was really cool, and she showed that she can act in that movie. I'm inclined to place the blame with the Wachowski Brothers, who apparently don't want their actors to convey emotions.
Of course, with Keanu Reeves, our boy Neo, he has no emotion to convey in the first place, so it's not like he had to work hard to be emotionless. Here's how bad an actor Reeves is (and don't tell me he's acting by not acting): in a scene in the train station, a young girl asks Neo if he's from the Matrix. Neo's response is "Yes. No. Well, sort of." Try to imagine the most unemotional way to say that, then times that by one hundred. Even now, you can't conceive how bad Reeves says this line.
Granted, a lot of the blame when it comes to dialogue in this movie lands on the Wachowski Brothers, who share many qualities with George Lucas: they have made very revolutionary science-fiction action movies and they have no idea how to write dialogue. There really is no way to top that infamous line Anakin Skywalker said to Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, contrasting her to sand (funny, that never works for me), but both Reloaded and Revolutions are filled with some very bad dialogue.
Having said all of this, somehow, The Matrix: Revolutions is a better movie than Reloaded, though not as good as the original. I think it helps that here there are action sequences all throughout the movie, whereas in the second film, we got two massive action sequences and long, long stretches of doubletalking and conundrum-filled conversations. I guess we'll have to settle for Revolutions, a great action movie that falters whenever the actors open their mouths to talk.
Josh Spiegel is an entertainment reporter for the Web Devil. Reach him at joshua.spiegel@asu.edu.
