The Matrix: Reloaded

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * *)

It's not giving away any secrets to say that The Matrix Reloaded ends with the line "To Be Concluded" because fans will know the third part of the trilogy arrives on the big screen next month.

A couple of years back The Matrix, written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, was an inspired leap in movie-making, sci-fi, and harnessing what was then the cutting-edge of film technology. Oh, and we nearly forgot, in taking beer ads to the next dimension.

As Part 2 opens, we know that 250,000 humans have escaped from the grid of the Matrix, and gathered to build Zion near the Earth's core (or as someone else might have put it, among those dark Satanic mills). The Machines are drilling toward Zion so quickly that they will arrive in 36 hours.

As we are told in a tedious first hour that includes a lot of meetings about as exciting as the South Taranaki District Council deciding whether to approve the paint job on a new cheese factory, to avert the attack, the humans are going to have to send out an emissary, Neo (Keanu Reeves), and his ship, re-enter The Matrix, and follow some philosophical advice that The Oracle (Gloria Foster) might have got off the back of a Weet-bix packet.

In the second hour Neo runs about, cyber-graphically, haunted by dreams of the death of his beloved Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), to piece together the clues that will allow him to prevent the end of humanity as she is now known. There is some light relief (Persephone, Monica Belucci) and some spectacular effects (sorting out her French boyfriend) and a great highway chase, and a lot of scene-setting for Part 3 from The Architect (Helmut Bakaitis).

If it weren't for the fact that I'm aware there is a huge cult out there for The Matrix who will flood the e.g. office email system I'd say that this is a film that is not as good, nor as profound, as it thinks it is, and it's really a filler to keep the merchandising alive for Part 3. Hush my mouth.

DVD features: movie (150min); commentaries (in Japanese, sub-titled in English) by the directors of The Second Renaissance Parts 1 and 2; Scroll to Screen, a 22-minute look at the history of anime; Execution, a 55-minute look at the making of the shorts of the Animatrix; Making of Enter the Matrix video game.