After watching The Matrix Revolutions, I feel a bit like I should repent for giving The Matrix Reloaded four stars back in May. Why? Reloaded didn't deserve some of the harsh criticism it received. It had some genuinely exciting action sequences. It even held a bit of philosophical ground with the original Matrix. But it set us up for this: a plodding, lifeless and leaden final chapter with little of the gosh-wow action that made the first two installments so enjoyable, and most of the philosophical pondering replaced with gooey platitudes about love.
It's too bad, because as the (supposed) final chapter in the saga, Revolutions will leave viewers with a bad last impression, and will have critics going back to their lukewarm evaluations of the 1999 original. It also won't help Reloaded much, perched between the shock of the new of the first film and the thundering letdown of Revolutions, and now looking more and more like a bridge to disaster. For writer-director brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, it's a sign they've overextended themselves, creating a movie that gets crushed under the weight of its own mythology.
The story literally picks up right where Reloaded left off, since the two films were shot at the same time and essentially constitute one long sequel to the original. Neo (Keanu Reeves), the human savior destined to lead his enslaved people in their battle against the evil machines, is in a sort of limbo, stuck between the real world and the Matrix, a computer-generated mass hallucination that keeps the humans in check to serve as batteries for the machines. The rebel stronghold of Zion is only hours away from being invaded by hordes of robots and Neo is, naturally, their only hope.
His cohorts, love interest Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and mentor Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), must rescue him while the rest of Zion mount a final defense. Then Neo has to save the world, because that's what you do in the final chapter of a trilogy.
The film's opening is rather more confusing than it sounds, with Neo's limbo represented as an odd antiseptic train station, and Morpheus and Trinity invading a futuristic fetish club to face snivelling French villain the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) and bargain for Neo's life. Plot mumbo-jumbo aside, it serves as a promising start, as the Wachowskis present a short but stunning battle in the club with the Merovingian's henchmen moving effortlessly from floor to ceiling like futuristic Spider-Men.
But the limbo bit gets pushed to the side rather quickly, and from there it's on to a long, long, long battle for Zion—and over an hour without even a glimpse of the Matrix itself. The Zion battle is cheesy, predictable and boring, with all the standard sci-fi and military clichés about holding your ground and dying with honor and .... Come on, haven't we seen this movie already! Worst of all, the Zion footage is visually uninteresting, perhaps the only unforgivable sin the Wachowskis could commit. It's cobbled together from Star Wars, Aliens and years of sci-fi B-movies, and not in a good way.
When we finally get back to the Matrix for the climactic battle between Neo and his nemesis Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), it's not worth the wait. Yeah, it's an atmospheric and exciting battle set in a rainstorm, but it doesn't build on the Wachowskis' visual style the way Reloaded's car chase or Burly Brawl did. It's not much more inventive than your average superhero movie.
And therein lies Revolutions' biggest problem: It's just so damn average. The Matrix did something truly new and different with its melange of sci-fi, anime, comic books and martial arts; in Revolutions, we're left with a laughable "love" story between Neo and Trinity that's never believable and an even less-developed one between second-stringer Link and his wife. For a film series that once asked probing philosophical questions (albeit in a simplistic way) to end up with "Love is all you need" is disappointing, pedantic, and worst of all, a waste of time.