Thursday, November 06, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: One for all

The Matrix Revolutions delivers all the expected Wachowskian elements

By Jeannette Catsoulis

All is not well in the Matrix. The Agent Smith program (Hugo Weaving) is replicating more easily than a Microsoft virus (even appearing, distractingly, in current promos for LOTR: The Return of the King) and is threatening to destroy the Machines' elaborate illusion. Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), the hedonistic Frenchman with a taste for swearing and pneumatic Italian actresses, is still eating and cursing Neo (Keanu Reeves) for something that happened in Reloaded (I can't remember what exactly, but it probably involved a derri¸re-kicking). And The Oracle (now played by Mary Alice) has an entirely new face and body and is identifiable only by her drab housedresses and overflowing ashtray. In between drags, even she is forced to admit, "I still don't recognize myself in the mirror."

She's not alone: In Wachowski World, characters may only be recognizable for so long before morphing into someone, or something, else (in Revolutions, Neo becomes two other entities--three if you count a flash of light). But for the Wachowskis--who have already said there won't be a Matrix 4--the problem lies less in deciding what to do with their Christ-like creation than in coaxing audiences back into theaters after the overstuffed, confusing and inhuman Reloaded. In the end, simplicity won out; and while Revolutions is nowhere near the standard of the magical first film, it supplies some of what Reloaded lacked (consistency, spectacle rooted in humanity) and avoids many of that film's miscalculations, particularly a mind-numbing busyness and emotional frigidity.

Without spoiling things for readers already in possession of their rubber suits and hideous sunglasses (Carrie-Anne Moss' Trinity looks more than ever like a malevolent insect), a brief plot outline: Neo's body lies in Zion while his mind inhabits a limbo between the Matrix and the "real" world of the Machines. Here, limbo is a subway station called Mobil Avenue--which makes perfect sense as all those machines must consume more oil than a Republican presidential campaign--and Neo must find a way to board a train back to mind/body convergence. This involves outwitting the Trainman (Bruce Spence), a tombstone-toothed skank who works for Merovingian and who may be the only truly homeless person in the entire trilogy.

Back in Zion, the huddled masses prepare for a showdown with the Machines while Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) give each other The Look and Trinity just looks lonely. Elsewhere, Agent Smith continues his infestation and the Oracle bakes cookies for a little Indian girl (don't ask; I have no idea). There is less of Persephone (though rather more of Ms. Bellucci, if that's possible), and a lot less of Neo, who seems very tired of fighting the Smiths and being ported all the time. His entire performance is like a sigh of relief.

The Matrix Revolutions delivers, on cue, all the expected elements: the stylized costumes and head movements, the fifth-grade dialogue where every statement is preceded by "There's something I have to say" or "There's no easy way to say this." The final, gravity-defying Neo/Smith bout is here, plus a wonderfully staged battle with the Machines (I particularly enjoyed the massively-imagined lifters, the mutant offspring of Sigourney Weaver's loader and Robocop's ED 209). There's even a revelation about Smith's "parentage." But ultimately--and there's no easy way to say this--the movie, like all action movies nowadays, is not really designed for American audiences at all but for foreign markets where the genre's visual syntax is well understood and fewer words means money saved on subtitles. "Everything that has a beginning has an end," says the tag line. Not in financial terms it doesn't.
w w w q q