|
 |
|
The Matrix Revolutions
**1/2
Cinema
Review - November 26, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
129 minutes. Written and directed by Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski. Produced
by Grant Hill, Joel Silver. Starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie Ann Moss, Hugo
Weaving, Mary Alice, Laurence Fishburne, Helmut Bataikis, Tanveer K. Atwal,
Monica Bellucci, Lambert Wilson.
Picture this.
It's February. "Kill Bill Vol. 2" is here. The
movie begins with kick-ass action -- dazzlingly rehashing pop culture influences,
never stopping for a boring functional moment, throwing it all out there
with colour, wit and joyously crazy rhythm. Maybe it feels a little weird,
but we know that by the end, it will have delivered all we hoped for and
expected.
And then comes that end. The Bride faces down
Bill. They exchange some tough one-liners about revenge, sin, the past coming
back to haunt us, and all the juicy rest of it. But they don't draw any swords.
Bill says, "Ya know, my little chickadee, I sense a lack of conviction in
your voice. Perhaps your rationality has grown up big time, and given you
mercy, compassion and forgiveness."
And she says, "Skip it, cowboy. But since you
mention it… there is something not quite right here. The moment isn't
welling up the way I thought it would. Maybe it's your spell, Bill. I always
fell for that. But… yeah. Something. I dunno."
And he says, "Well, shiiit, darlin'! Let's just
hang back! Rest them chop-socky legs of yours, let Elle fix you a lemonade
and keep her eye on ya, and we'll give you a nice meal and get ya
high!"
And she says, "Hokey-dokey-kokey, Bill. We can
make up. But don't you try nothin' funny. My eyes are wide
open."
And he says, "Understood, honey. You know, now
I come to think of it, what's all the fussin' and feudin' about in the first
place? You're a sharp cookie. Maybe you were right in gettin' out of the
violence business all those years ago. We shouldn't be fighting at all. We
should be fixin' to take all the ills out of the world. It's Hattori Hanzo
who's the one causin' trouble. If he hadn't made such fine powerful swords,
I reckon a lot less folks'd be tempted to kill."
And she ponders this for a minute. She looks up.
She is converted. And out of her mouth: "When you're right, old buddy, you're
right. We shall put all our efforts into destroying Hattori Hanzo and his
weapon repertoire. This shall obviously cure humanity of violence and satisfy
my thirst for revenge."
There's a woman hobbling around in the corner.
She speaks up: "But, uh, guys, what about all the other weapons in the
world?"
So Michael Madsen turns to her and says, "Those
will self-destruct if we want them to, Sophie. Those will self-destruct if
we want them to."
All that bulljazz makes about as much sense as
"The Matrix Revolutions", which is an okay action picture,
a bad Matrix picture and the most shocking disappointment since… well,
take your pick of this year. We've had "Terminator 3", "Spy Kids 3-D", "American
Pie: The Wedding" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico". One of those movies was
good, one was okay and two sucked, but none of them has been the right way
to end a trilogy. The stars are against the storytellers of sagas. Or maybe
they're just getting lazy.
I don't know what to say. It's not like I embraced
"The Matrix" as a substitute for religion, but this phenomenon has been a
good quick fix of anti-establishment feeling, mixed up with action sequences
that actually served the story instead of punctuating the plot. I've read
all about how the first movie has "an Alice in Wonderland purity" and "tapped
into a sense of pre-millennial angst", and as pretentious as those phrases
sound, they're right: It was the story of a guy who found out his world wasn't
real, and all through it was a sense of learning the truth we secretly know
and beginning to break free of chains. We could watch it with grounding and
not think of it as the answer to all life's problems, but it was still a
great action movie with solid purpose as metaphor; it knew something about
the shackles of rule and conformity.
It stayed with us. Now and again when I need to
feel more in control of a situation, I summon up that shot from the end of
"The Matrix", where Neo stops the agents' bullets by picturing them in code,
and they stand there as a bunch of glowing green symbols. He's managed to
register the fakeness of the computerised world; he knows how to step back
and deal with it. He won't be distracted by the amount of images surrounding
his field of vision, and he can be all he was meant to be. The other action
movies of 1999 included "Entrapment", "The Phantom Menace", "End of Days"
and "Wild Wild West". Which of those had an image of such power, or such
cool?
Then there was "Matrix Reloaded". A lot of people
didn't like it, but I did. It was reassuring to go back into the universe
of the Wachowski brothers after four years of Matrix rip-offs, and experience
their unique cauldron of religious imagery, martial arts, leather suits,
science fiction hokum and grand-scale action set pieces. We got our first
glimpses of the human city of Zion, experienced its internal political struggles
and saw its masses party on down to the insistent beat of tribal drums. Again,
this was a movie that felt like it was building and about to break free:
It ended with that confounding, thought-provoking speech by the Architect,
which made the whole movie feel like a promissory note that the series was
about to blow our minds.
Reluctantly, I get to "The Matrix Revolutions".
It starts with Neo (Keanu Reeves) somewhere in between the real world and
the computer world. The display screens say he's still in the matrix, but
his body is lying comatose in Zion. This leads to a scene in a train station,
which too is somewhere between the physical and computer worlds, owned by
a crazy homeless gatekeeper who shouts a lot. There is also a return to the
lair of the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), the French guy whose wife is played
by Monica Bellucci. Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne)
need a favour from him, and he says he'll make a deal, and then the humans
say what the hell and start a big bar brawl.
There is the inevitable attack on Zion -- sentinels
descend, and warriors strapped into giant mechanised armour respond with
machine gun fire. The movement in this battle is all very skilful, and I
appreciated the intricacy of the special effects, which depict much activity
and have to convincingly create all the wild movement and menace and fire
of the attackers. But as a key part of a movie, it's so-so; once the sentinels
have started pouring in, and the men have begun shooting, it's the same sort
of imagery over and over for something like twenty minutes.
"Matrix Revolutions" has one chapter of awesome
and original visual invention, which comes when Neo and Trinity have to travel
into the heart of the machines' own capital city. After flying through the
fire-ravaged ruins that are the majority of Earth, their ship has to get
past sentinels, sensors and lasers, fly up into the scorched sky and reach
The Source, which is basically the God of the machines. Its outer parts are
made up of sharp little metal bits, which swim out and around, and sometimes
pull back to form a large angry face.
Neo and The Source negotiate, and then it's back
to Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), so the fate of all existence can be decided
by a boxing match in the rain. There are perfunctory lines about how humanity
can free itself because it is able to make choices, and there is recapping
of all the symbolism and gushing about the mystic force of love being able
to overcome any obstacles. This is not what I wanted to see.
From the end of the first film, it seemed like
the Wachowskis had more up their sleeves, and would need the scope of a trilogy
to get out all their ideas or provide us with philosophical answers. Now
I wish they'd quit while they were ahead, and finished this series with the
words that ended the original: "I didn't come here to tell you how this was
going to end, I came here to tell you how it was going to
begin."
Whatever you make of "Revolutions", consider this:
The war between man and the machines exists because the humans are sneaking
people out of the matrix, and if they continue to do so, the robots will
be drained of energy. Thus, the war cannot end the way it does here. If
"Revolutions" is to be believed, the machines are happy to let the war end
just by destroying the force that they created to destroy the force that
was going to end the war. The humans are happy that the war is over, even
though they started the war, and their objectives have not been
achieved.
I suppose this is something to do with realising
that there are ultimately no big winners in battle, and truces are the best
solutions for opposing parties to continue in some form or another. But dammit,
the movie is called "Revolutions". I wanted to see pods getting busted
open, pseudo-profound revelations about the nature of existence, power struggles
and splinter groups forming as different philosophies about the next phase
of human life become prevalent with different groups, and I wanted to see
the computers get switched the hell off. Or at least, I wanted to see that
process approached. I wanted to see the humans try and win their ultimate
struggle. If that would have made it a 21st Century "Return of the Jedi",
fair enough -- it would have been more satisfying than this.
"The Matrix Revolutions" is about something else.
It is not about conclusiveness, but about solving the immediate struggles
of its own stupid sci-fi details. It is about confusing us until we throw
our hands up in the air and believe that even though we haven't figured it
out, there's a message in it somewhere. The feeling I'm most left with is
that an unmade movie lurks out in the ether, and we're still waiting to see
it in place of this one. The matrix had us. Suckers.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2003 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2003 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)