# Matrix, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Gary Jones

    The Matrix  (8/10)

    10th June 1999: Cineworld, Bristol

In The Matrix, writer-directors the Wachowski Brothers have taken a familiar science fiction idea - that what we perceive as reality is merely an illusion - and from it have constructed a high-tech action flick that is as cool as it is dazzling.

The film seems to start out with a major handicap: it stars Keanu Reeves - surely the worst actor ever to make it as a major Hollywood star. He plays Neo, a gormless computer hacker who finds his world turned inside out and himself transformed into the best hope for liberation of an enslaved mankind. Keanu can do gormless OK, but the rest is heavy stuff. Mercifully, his thesping is kept to a minimum and he is called on instead to look good while flying through the air and dodging bullets. We, and Keanu, are also lucky that there are some real actors in the film to help out. Laurence Fishburne plays Morpheus, the leader of a band of freedom fighters who explains to Neo, and to us, just what the hell is going on. Hugo Weaving plays chief bad guy Agent Smith, a Man In Black who is so spookily menacing he steals every scene he's in. But the real star is newcomer Carrie-Anne Moss, who as Trinity, a ballsy and resourceful gun-toting sexpot in black PVC, gives us an action heroine to rank with Sigourney Weaver in Aliens and Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.

In the illusory world in which much of the action of The Matrix takes place, those who have realised that the world around them is not real can, with training, manipulate the physical nature of that illusory environment. This provides our heroes with the ability to run up walls and leap between buildings, and gives the film-makers an excuse to let rip with some fantastically imaginative use of technical wizardry. The "flo-mo" process is used, in which the camera seems to move around frozen action, as are a whole raft of effects of the kind that seemed so revolutionary in Terminator 2. When such techniques are used in action sequences that are as well choreographed and constructed as those in The Matrix, the result is like seeing something genuinely fresh and exciting. Such sequences are helped by the excellent soundtrack featuring such heavyweight noisemakers as The Propellerheads, Ministry and Rage Against The Machine.

Towards the end, The Matrix seems to abandon any exploration of the interesting ideas at its core, and it doesn't have the mythical weight of a film like Blade Runner, but at least is has some ideas, and as action eye-candy it's hard to beat.

-- Gary Jones Homepage: www.bohr.demon.co.uk PGP public key available from servers (DH/DSS key ID: 0x11EAE903)

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