The Matrix Reloaded [2003]
Director: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Actor: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Harold Perrineau, Hugo Weaving, Monica Bellucci, Jada Pinkett Smith
Christus, where to begin…
Well, I guess we’ll start about four years ago, when the Wachowski brothers, then only known for their near cult-classic Bound, made their big break-through blockbuster, by the name of The Matrix. Anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock since that time knows about the Matrix, and has probably seen the Matrix as it quickly rose to become an all-time classic, ranking up there with the likes of Star Wars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia.
In The Matrix, we meet a young man by the name of Thomas Anderson, who – as a nighttime hacker and electron cowboy – finds out the truth about society; everyone is enslaved in a virtual reality, tightly controlled by machines, robots that were once obedient to Man, but have long since turned the tides and enslaved their former masters to use them as overgrown powercells. Harvesting enormous amounts of energy from body heat, they kept Man alive by simulating normal life, set in 1999. Some people live freely, deep underground, where the machines can’t find them, in the last vestige of human resistance; the city called Zion.
Neo is freed from his slavery by a man called Morpheus, who believes that Neo is the chosen to lead humanity to salvation from the machines. He believes that Neo has extraordinairy powers, and that he is able to shape the Matrix – that same virtual reality that enslaves so many – to his will.
Guess what? At the end of The Matrix you find out the dude is right!
The second film, The Matrix Reloaded, starts off some time after the first movie, where Neo, still under the command of Morpheus and his crew of ultimate bad-asses – this time joined by Harold Perrineau, best known for his role as Mercutio in Romeo + Juliet – is slowly finding out more and more about the Matrix, and his role in the salvation of Man. But also about the Machines that control it, and the programs that run in it, about Zion and it’s politics, about love, and about sacrifice.
If you go and see this film, and all you want is to see more of the same bad-ass kung fu scenes, action scenes and psuedo-hacker flexing, then you’ll be satisfied enough…but be aware; there is a lot more intellectual, philosophical and spiritual depth in this movie, that it becomes hard sometimes to simply enjoy the visual spectacle and the high paced action.