directors/screenwriters
Andy Wachowski
Larry Wachowski
producer
Joel Silver
cinematographer
Bill Pope
music
Don Davis
editor
Zach Staenberg
cast
Keanu Reeves (Neo)
Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus)
Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity)
Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith)
Gloria Foster (Oracle)
Joe Pantoliano (Cypher)
Marcus Chong (Tank)
Julian Arahanga (Apoc)
Matt Doran (Mouse)
Belinda McClory (Switch)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 136m
u.s.
release: March 31,
1999
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
site
other wachowski
bros. films
reviewed on this website:
- bound
- the
matrix reloaded
- the
matrix revolutions
|
Keanu
Reeves and Laurence Fishburne get top billing, but the real stars
of The Matrix are John Gaeta, Yuen Woo-Ping, and Bill
Pope. Who, who, and who? Well, these three guys -- Gaeta supervising
the eye-popping visual effects, Yuen coordinating the whiplash
stunts and fighting, and cinematographer Pope showing the flair
for kinetic action he displayed in his movies for Sam Raimi (Darkman,
Army
of Darkness) -- are the heart and soul of The Matrix,
which otherwise would lack both, plus a brain.
The Matrix is one of those headache-inducing sci-fi movies
some of us need to have explained to us out in the parking lot;
once we figure it all out, we realize there's not much there
to figure out. This is the first of a string of similar films
(preceding The 13th Floor, which looks to be exactly the
same movie, and eXistenZ,
which promises to be better) dealing with virtual reality; is
anyone really that nostalgic for The Lawnmower Man?
Here, for instance, we learn that reality as we know it is actually
a computer-generated construct (the Matrix), that we all reside
in gooey wombs while thinking that we're leading our lives (that
means you, reading this review, and me, writing it), and that
the machines of the world have set it up this way to siphon off
our energy to use to keep themselves going. Are you reaching
for the Excedrin yet? Movies like this toss in a lot of complicated
mumbo-jumbo so we won't realize we're watching yet another expensive
good-vs.-evil comic book. There are two realities at war in The
Matrix: the deep movie it pretends to be vs. the shallow
popcorn flick it really is.
Keanu Reeves, in monosyllabic superhero mode, is a hacker nicknamed
Neo, who is recruited by a band of rebels to aid them in their
fight against the tyrannical critters (who manifest themselves
mostly as Secret-Service-type agents). Trained by Obi-Wan --
uh, I mean Morpheus (Fishburne), Neo becomes a black-clad hipster
warrior out of a Hong Kong actioner, aided by ass-kicking partner
Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) as he shoots, kicks, punches, and
cartwheels his way through a seemingly limitless supply of faceless
enemies.
I enjoyed a few of the FX/stuntwork conflagrations, which come
close to putting the thrill and spirit of the best adventure
comic books on the big screen. But The Matrix goes on
far too long, and writers-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski,
who wrote the comatose Assassins
and made a splash with their spectacularly overrated debut Bound,
don't seem to have anything on their hard drive except cleverness.
The paranoid details of the premise are thoroughly worked out;
the characters and motives, much less so. Of the actors, Fishburne
gets by on sheer presence, while Hugo Weaving, one of the queens
from The Adventures of Priscilla, keeps himself amused
in the role of the head bad-guy agent by working 1,001 variations
on a threatening monotone.
Too bad the filmmakers don't have as much variety. The Wachowski
brothers are skipping from genre to genre, but unlike other brother
duos like the Hugheses and the Coens, they don't transcend genre;
they just wallow around in it, whether it's kinky noir
or apocalyptic sci-fi, and overload it with so much stuff that
some people will no doubt be impressed. The Matrix, I
fear, may reach the same sci-fi fans who embraced Dark
City -- people so hungry for thoughtful science fiction
that they'll project deep meaning onto anything that seems weird
enough to be deep. The marketing whizzes at Warner have constructed
their own reality around this hollow eye-candy, and if the fans
fall for it, they'll think they're seeing a classic, when in
reality they'll be in wombs of wishful thinking, deep inside
a Matrix created by a studio desperate for a hit. |