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Despite the inevitable law of diminishing returns,
The Matrix Revolutions is quite satisfying as an adrenalized action epic, marking yet another milestone in the exponential evolution of computer-generated special effects. That may not be enough to satisfy hardcore
Matrix fans who turned the Wachowski Brothers' hacker mythology into a quasi-religious pop-cultural phenomenon, but there's no denying that the trilogy goes out with a cosmic bang instead of the whimper that many expected. Picking up precisely where
The Matrix Reloaded left off, this 130-minute finale finds Neo (Keanu Reeves) at a virtual junction, defending the besieged human enclave of Zion by confronting the attacking machines on their home turf, while humans combat swarms of tentacled mechanical sentinels as Zion's fate lies in the balance. It all amounts to a blaze of CGI glory, devoid of all but the shallowest emotions, and so full of metaphysical hokum that the trilogy's detractors can gloat with I-told-you-so sarcasm. And yet,
Revolutions still succeeds as a slick, exciting hybrid of cinema and video game, operating by its own internal logic with enough forward momentum to make the whole trilogy seem like a thrilling, magnificent dream.
-- Jeff Shannon
From The New Yorker
In the final installment of the "Matrix" trilogy, the directors Larry and Andy Wachowski have made the intricacies of the original movie (the play between actual and simulated reality) secondary to the main events of spectacle, fighting, and stunningly wooden dialogue. At its best, the picture is violently exciting; at its worst, banal and monotonous. More than ever, the plot's conventional science-fiction elements (man vs. machine) are in the foreground. The movie may best be described as an enormously sophisticated version of the 1953 George Pal classic, "The War of the Worlds." Serious fans-call them Matricians-will spend hours debating the apocalypse as revealed by the Brothers Wachowski. But if you ignore the wilder speculative meanings inspired by the series, there remains a halfway palpable idea: in a period in which gigantic corporations and entire governments devote themselves to promoting made-up realities, people may genuinely wonder what world they are living in. With Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Cornel West. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker