The Matrix Revolutions
Cinematography:
Bill PopeComposer:
Don DavisCast:
Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Ian Bliss, Collin Chou, Lachy Hulme, Nathaniel Lees, Harry Lennix, Robyn Nevin, David Roberts (more)VOD (5)
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The Revolution is now: The Matrix Revolutions. Neo. Morpheus. Trinity. They and other heroes stand on the brink of victory or annihilation in the epic war against the machines in the stunning final chapter of The Matrix trilogy. For Neo, that means going where no human has ever dared - into the heart of Machine City and into a cataclysmic showdown with the exponentially more powerful renegade program Smith. For The Wachowskis and producer Joel Silver, that means soaring beyond the amazing visual inventivness of the first two films. (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (11)
“Hey Larry, Joel Silver was here.” - “Yeah? And what did the old bastard want?" - “He said he had a lot of money for us if we wanted to shoot another two parts.” - “That’s great, bro! Let’s put something together, then. We have loads of ideas, we can put them all together and something will come out of it.” - “Cool. So, here we put this, and we put this here, here we drop that long dialogue scene, it’s just verbal filler, but who cares, they’ll survive. And, bro, it’s ten minutes long, and you know, ten minutes here, ten minutes there, and we have four hours, two hole films!” - “Yeah, you’re right. And here we could squeeze some sequence inspired by anime, the Japanese love that and they’re the second biggest movie market in the world. We can’t go wrong.” - “Yeah, and some love-story, too.” - “Hey, Andy, those heroic moments wouldn’t hurt and...” Enough with the snark, now I'm going to be dead serious, I'm going to be as serious as the heroes of the Matrix; so serious and lofty that in the wonder of their own loftiness they sound, in the words of Amadeus, as if they shit marble… One way to grasp the Matrix is to search and search for meaning, search for the key to the truth. But it's a bit like dropping the key to my place into a puddle, I’d have to find it because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get into my apartment, but truth be told, digging in a puddle is not very "interesting" fun. Just as much as digging through a pile of verbal ballast and suffering through seriously meant pathetic dialogues that lack a shred of insight. I would so much like to search and find the meaning, but the Wachowskis won't let me because of the form of their narrative. And yet The Matrix Revolutions could have been a great movie. The scene from the subway station, from the "intermediate section", was funny and awesome. Likewise, the ending itself, I'm not afraid to say, was breathtaking! But everything in between? Awful! Pathetic battle scenes cut from the Soviet film Liberation. The Wachowskis proved that I remembered my childhood years, when I went to see shitty Soviet war films for free that were full of pathos of the coarsest grain. “How old are you, kid?” - “Eighteen.” - “Should have said sixteen, I might have believed that.” - “All right, I'm sixteen.” - “The minimum age for the Corp's eighteen. Sixteen's too young.” - “The machines don't care how old I am. They'll kill me just the same.”... This is not a sample from a Soviet war movie, but from this film. The American kid wanted to fight and he accomplished a great thing. No, really some patterns don't change even after fifty years and it doesn't matter the country of origin. But despite these excesses, The Matrix Revolutions is not a stupid movie, although some of the interpretations are ridiculous. For example, the shape-shifting of the Oracle is explained by Matrix advocates as a Merovingian punishment, but the reality is much more prosaic. Gloria Foster, the actress who played the Oracle, died during the filming, so the Wachowskis helped themselves to this pathetic ruse. I have nothing against the concept of the Matrix, but the form, my friends, the form…
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A sad and undignified ending to the series. Unarguably it has an underlying thought and depth to it (even though sometimes it is a bit of a problem finding it). But as for the rest; the intriguingly developing storyline around the Merovingian and Persephone trails off into nothing. And the amount of clichés in this exceeds anything seen in any other seriously intended movie over the past years. OK, maybe there are more clichés in Pearl Harbor and We Were Soldiers, but at least those movies don’t ride on the philosophical wave typical of the beginning of the twenty-first century. The effects are just for effect and not for the good of the movie. Needlessly long scenes and a completely different approach to the material than in the preceding parts. I have nothing against change, but it just doesn’t work here. It almost looks as if, paradoxically, apart from who plays Persephone, the only significant upside of the movie is the music in the last third. The chorals are surprisingly suitable for this “techno movie". The only flawless area is the audiovisual treat in the form of the final duel between Neo and Smith and it is a great shame about all of the wasted potential here. As excellent as part one was, despite it borrowing a lot of motifs from other movies, and part two was a great relaxing watch, unfortunately part three is nothing better than criminally mediocre.
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Drops continue to fall, the heroes remain the same, but that code has somehow changed for us. It is indeed green, but it does not fall smoothly. It stutters and instead of a quality storyline, it flows with unjustified monologues, unbelievable dialogues, and sadly dysfunctional action scenes. When I think back to the perfection of the first installment, the precisely defined characters, and the unforgettable two hours that can be watched endlessly without losing their magic, it feels unfair that the Wachowskis have fatally let me down and forever ruined one unforgettable story for me. Morpheus has become just a motivational figure, Niobe herself has no role, regardless of rescuing anyone, and only the tangible bond between Neo and Trinity gives me a feeling of some vitality. And even the perfect final battle does not repair that tainted impression for me. The program has performed an invalid operation and will be terminated.
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Rating the entire trilogy. Like in Reloaded, there are moments that really pissed me off, but as a whole it’s amazing, and the climax, when white is reunited with black, can’t be described other than superb, unexpected (though actually inevitable) and incredibly deep… PS: In the great order of things, the Battle of Sion is just eye candy, but that doesn’t alter the fact that it made my jaw drop.
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Matrix Revolutions has a more tangible and meaningful plot, less pseudo-philosophising and less gratuitous action for effect than in The Matrix Reloaded. I’m satisfied with that. You’ll find yourself yawning through the first hour, but the subsequent “war of the machines” is amazing. If there were more emotion in the final digital fight between Neo and Smith, Revolutions would have been a class better than Reloaded. The film’s ending has an appropriate amount of the pseudo-depth that the whole saga has been faking. Those who thought that there was something big behind everything will be disappointed. Unavoidably disappointed. Three and a half stars.
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