FILM REVIEWS |
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Rapidly we slip into familiar Matrix
territory, like into a glove with a quicksand lining. Not just
green code trickery and the unsettling normality of ‘our’
normality, but of chaos meeting order, inevitability versus
free will and of artifice meeting truthfulness. The giant question
What is? Neo has become more spiritual leader
and Gnostic warrior with his skills honed to a deadlier degree
than the nascent talent we saw before. His love for Trinity
has become an open event, but restrained by furtive attempts
at privacy in cramped Zion, and by Neo’s dark predictive
gaze as he sees a possible outcome that might tear the two apart.
Morpheus continues to be Zion is a major part of the movie, especially as it is under attack from a Sentinel army. With humans comes fallibility (the central premise of the first movie) but deep down in its cavernous depths, another quality is born- hope - that gathers a selection of ship captains, including Morpheus, to embark on a dangerous plan. Generally, things are not what they seem. Agent Smith is bigger, badder and comes with an upgrade called ego and body-snatches his way through the plot. At the end of the last film, a piece of Neo’ essence is embedded in Agent Smith and vice versa which locks them in an evil-twin symbiosis which will probably have to be resolved in the final film. There were more Matrices than we were
led to originally believe and although the rabbit goes further
down the hole, we realise not only has the hole always been
controlled but so has the rabbit, so has the soil etc etc. As
it is said, 'choice is an illusion created between those with
power and those without'. (Challenge everything you thought
you knew about the first To say the fight scenes are spectacular would be akin to being mildly amused by winning the lottery. There are some sections that have the visual impact of dropping a cluster bomb onto a glassware factory. Others make you feel like the wingtip of a jet fighter. If only I could borrow Neo’s area-clearing skills for a while at Waterloo on Christmas Eve. If the laws of physics that glue reality together are withdrawn, then total destruction becomes a violent form of dance; the matador’s cape is swept away to allow the action to charge straight through. Think: Morpheus plus samurai sword on back of eighteen wheel truck; Trinity, firing an Uzi in each hand, falling thirty stories backwards with perfect aim; Neo fighting a hundred Agents simultaneously with a lead pole. As all destruction takes place within The Matrix, we care little for the consequences, as everything is a lie anyway. This unbelief makes the action more believable than muscle-bound Rambos shredding a real downtown area in today's high-alert world. Worryingly, the pioneering SFX techniques (Bullet Time) developed in the last film were dubbed “inadequate” and “almost arcane” by the Wachowski’s. The blurb continued to explain about more revolutionary procedures; u-Cap, mo-cam etc, but it is obvious that despite acronyms, this film really does push the envelope of what is visually attainable. Why is this worrying? Because I’d guess that the majority of the four to five thousand-strong crew were digitally based. To create a film depicting the rise of The Machine that exclusively uses machine-based techniques is halfway to creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. But fear not! In the event of Insane Mechanoid Killers rising up to destroy us, then at least with this film, we’ll know what to do - just hand me those shades. words: Rufus Sanders
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At
the risk of being lynched by my friends and colleagues I’ve
promised myself not to give the game away. Lets start with a
basic premise of 8/10. You cannot be told what Reloaded is all
about -you do have to see it for yourself. And you’ll
get in the mood as soon as Warner Brothers wobbles their logo
ominously in front of you again.