The Matrix (*1/2)
review by Jon Waterman

Thomas Anderson is an office slave by day and a master computer hacker by night. After doing some research on the legends of “Morpheus” and “The Matrix,” he finds himself being contacted by them. Morpheus tells Thomas (aka Neo) that he is more than just a slave to his office; He is a slave to the world in which he lives. Computer programs have created everything he sees around him in order to keep human minds ignorant of their true place. Neo is also told that he may be the one person that can defeat the machines and bring peace to the human population once again. How much of this is true? How can Neo beat them? Will the human race become extinct?

The film is like a basic philosophy class approached badly. It really only introduces one main concept: What if the world you know doesn’t exist or isn’t really there? Granted, this idea could bring about a lot of debate and discussion that could easily encompass the two and a half hour running time, but the way the subject is handled makes me want to skip the class and just show up for tests. They constantly reinforce the thoughts. In other words, they spoon-feed you. “I thought it wasn't real.” “Your mind makes it real.” “What is ‘real’? How do you define ‘real’?” “You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.” Anyways, I could go on and on. The point is the movie does go on and on. Let me blow the movie out of the water by taking it one further. What if the matrix was also just an illusion? “Whoa.”

The odd thing is, they never explain how the first person broke free, do they? Were some humans just free from the start? Even if that’s the case, how did they discover they could pull people out and “save” them? So much time is spent telling us that the world we live in is a fake that they forget to let us in on how that was discovered and how Zion (the “real” city) came to be.

Along with the unfulfilling story comes extremely unfulfilling acting. Everyone. Likes. To. Pause. A lot. Evidently, forming sentences in the “real” world is much harder. The drawl of the agents (programs designed to kill humans that have freed their minds) and the dead space of the humans got to be too much. Speed it up. It’s an action/sci-fi flick for cryin’ out loud. Maybe if the written dialogue was better…. You already know what I think about that.

What review would be complete without mentioning the camera work? The film introduces new inventive techniques. The “bullet time” setup has been mimicked and parodied hundreds of times over, which is a testament to its contribution to film, but also brings about instant disdain when seen in anything else. I’m in favor of creating new rigs and blowing people away with fancy camera tricks, but I don’t think some of the special effects were there to back it up. Too much of the Computer Generated stuff looks CG. I guess that Matrix program still needs some work, too.

On the positive side, though, “The Matrix” features good costumes and set design and good cinematography. There were no indistinguishable shots placed in the film. The action was clear at all times, even with the rubble heavy shootouts. Even most of the slow motion stuff served useful and not overdone.

In the end, the movie left much to be desired. “The Truman Show” does a better job of getting the audience to wonder about if their world is real than “The Matrix” does. The fight sequences were too long. People talked way too much. I wanted to see more of the non-matrix and learn about that culture, because it seemed like an untapped resource to me. Much could have been done to improve the film or tighten it up and make it an extremely solid science fiction piece. Instead, it became a below average, big budget action movie that tried too hard.

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