Rating: ***

Produced by Joel Silver

Written & directed by Larry & Andy Wachowski

I never saw the original Matrix when it first came out. I can't really say why, as I usually have a good eye for quality science fiction flicks and make sure to catch them not too long after they premier. The Wachowski brothers' offbeat, noiresque creation simply fell through my cracks, so to speak.

But when I did see it on video, I was totally blown away. Here was a concept - the notion of reality not really being reality, but something completely different and out of one's frame of reference - as well as being horrible beyond human imagining - that had never been, to my cinematic knowledge, approached in quite this way before. The end of the first Matrix clearly left the opening for a sequel with Neo inside the fake "reality" taunting the system on a pay phone and then taking off into the sky like Superman. But as with most sequels, the challenge would be to come up with an encore that would be worthy of the original. And as with most sequels, Matrix Reloaded fell a ways short.

The gist of the plot is that, in the Real World, the machines are drilling down toward the last human city/redoubt known as Zion. This immediately raises the question of why they're doing so now as opposed to any time in the prior couple of centuries, or however long it's been since civilization was destroyed (even the Star Trek universe sometimes fudges on when things happened, and Matrix is deliberately, even self-parodyingly vague on just about everything). Maybe they have and the human survivors/escapees have simply moved someplace else underground to evade them, though given the vast machinery that Councilor Hamann (Anthony Zerbe) shows Neo in one of the seemingly endless series of impenetrable philosophizing scenes, it would seem to be a rather problematic task at best.

Neo's fellow free humans appear to draw the same conclusion (this time, at least). The question before them is how to combat this mortal threat - do they fight it in the Real World by conventional means, as Commander Lock (Harry Lenix) urges, or within the Matrix itself, as Morpheus quietly and confidently believes.

To me, this was, or should have been, the core plot of Reloaded. The rivalry and fundamental clash of worldviews between Lock and Morpheus both symbolized this dilemma facing all that remains of humanity as well as containing a personal animus in the form of another ship's captain, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), who once was Morpheus' squeeze before dumping him for Lock. Which, I have to say, I found mystifying, since Lock, from what we briefly see of him, comes across as a martinet and all-around jerk, as opposed to the no-nonsense military commander he's supposed to be. Whereas Morpheus is vastly more charismatic - which is hammered home in the subsequent revival/orgy scene - and just plain cooler. Maybe Niobe's an anti-religious bigot or something.

The problem is that this conflict is given completely short shrift. We get one small polemical scene in Lock's office after Morpheus returns to Zion from a mission, breaking orders to do so in the process, and then…nothing. The aforementioned Councilor Hamann, who interrupts the two in Lock's office (probably saved Lock from the stroke Morpheus' calm smugness was driving him toward), seemed from his similar calm demeanor to be leaning toward Morpheus' position, just as he also obviously had stroke on the Zion council.

If that outcome hadn't been preemptively clinched before, the aforementioned mass gathering settled the matter. Hamann actually introduced Morpheus, who delivered a sermon that succeeded in whipping the assemblage (congregation?) into a Pentacostal frenzy. If "not everybody believes as you do," as Lock spat at Morpheus in his office, there certainly seemed to be fewer people in that category after Morph finished his remarks.

Or maybe they were just extras from a Coors beer commercial. Sure seemed that way from the dance party-cum-orgy that broke out, which became a ten to fifteen minute music video, complete with driving techno beat and interspliced scenes of hot, sweaty sex between Neo and Trinity. Which was fine for what it was, and for a few minutes, except that this kept going on and on and on, with every conceivable shot of the thrusting, gyrating Zionites from every conceivable angle and distance mixed in with every conceivable shot of the thrusting, gyrating Neo and Trinity from every conceivable angle and distance that didn't actually display either of Carrie Anne Moss' nipples. Maybe other critics who are self-proclaimed Matrix marks were willing to cut this plot sinkhole a break, but I was drumming my fingers barely halfway through it.

Once the plot returned from its fleshly intermission, it had withered on the vine. The Zion Council ruled that Morpheus and two other volunteer captains were to follow his prophetic lead and overthrow the Matrix from within and thus fulfill the prophecy and save humanity, while Lock will get the remainder of the human forces to make Zion's last stand in the Real World. It goes without saying that Niobe is one of the captains who volunteers, symbolizing the victory of Morpheus' strategy over Lock's. So now the plot conundrum shifts from which defense strategy to pursue to the efficacy of Morpheus' faith in the Oracle (the favorite aunt-ish Gloria Foster).

From this point the story decays into pointlessly elliptical dialogue and quasi-perceptible symbolism that is only barely salvaged by the series of utterly stupefying action scenes that have become a Matrix trademark.

A message arrives from the Oracle, and Neo enters the Matrix to meet with her. But before he can he must prove himself as "the One" in a fight with one of her "bodyguards." The only thing of any practical significance she tells him is that he must next find someone called the Merovingian, who has in his employ somebody called the Keymaster, who in turn can get him into the core of the Matrix itself to, as the prophecy foretells, bring it down once and for all. The practicality then ends, to be followed by a fight between Neo and an army of Agents Smith (Yes, Hugo Weaving's unforgettable character not only didn't die in the first installment, but is now a rogue program with the ability to assimilate anybody in the Matrix in Borglike fashion) that is so absurdly over the top as to render suspension of disbelief flatly impossible.

ALL of these "people" are, of course, rogue computer programs, floating around in the Matrix's system as free agents, somehow. That there are apparently so many of them suggests either that the system is in dire need of an anti-virus upgrade or that these programs aren't as "rogue" as they appear to be - or the system is using them for its own ends, as well as our heroes.

That is the Merovingian's (Lambert Wilson) conclusion, which he delivers in stereotypically French fashion, which is to say arrogantly and ignorantly. He proves to be equally as uncooperative in producing the Keymaker, and has a couple of bodyguards with some rather unique capabilities that manifest themselves in some rather unique special effects that proceed to erupt all over the screen in, first, a relative tune-up battle between Neo and Merovingian's goons, followed by an absolutely insane series of breakneck, hair-raising highway chase scenes involving Morpheus, Trinity, the two bodyguards, and several agents, in which Neo is prevented from intervening by being deposited by Merovingian some five hundred miles away from the "city." Only at the very last moment does Neo come flying to the rescue, grabbing Morpheus and the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim) from a spectacular yet surreal collision between two agent-driven eighteen-wheelers.

The Keymaker is delivered courtesy of Merovingian's squeeze, Persephone (Monica Belluci), who essentially betrays her boyfriend for a kiss from Neo - right in front of Trinity, who amazingly manages to retain her self-control.

It's the relationship between Neo and Trinity that ends up being the key to this picture. The opening scene, depicted as a dream from which Neo awakens, is a precognitive vision of Trinity's apparent death. Neo's love for her is his Achilles heel, as is overtly and pointedly set forth when Neo and his allies succeed in penetrating the Matrix's core mainframe and Neo himself walks through the proverbial blinding light doorway to find…a control room, in which he finds the walls covered with TV screens of himself, and an old man who calls himself the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis). He breaks the "news" to Neo that he is not "the One," but the SIXTH "One"; that the Matrix has obliterated Zion's five predecessors; and that if Neo succeeds in shutting down the Matrix, all the billions of humans plugged into it will perish. Oh, yes, and Trinity is about to die.

It's Neo's Kobayashi Maru: save Zion or save his true love. Since there's a third Matrix installment coming in six months, his choice was as obvious as the plot makes it, and as the Architect predicts it to be. He takes Door #2 and swoops in like a bat out of hell to save Trinity's life. Was it the right choice? That depends on whether the Architect was telling the whole, or partial, truth, or was entirely full of shit. Neo, for his part, doesn't give it a whole lot of thought - he basically takes the Architect at his word and follows his heart. It's Morpheus who is devastated, everything he's believed for his entire life having been discredited. And it's his Messiah who delivers the Bad News.

To make matters worse, one of their own, who appears to be sneaking up behind Neo in an earlier Zion scene, sabotages Commander Lock's last stand defense. Now the machines are coming, and there's nothing to stop them.

Except, perhaps, Neo, who exhibits "One" like powers OUTSIDE the Matrix in stopping a machine onslaught. Which leads to the possibility that what they consider to be the "real" world is simply another computer simulation. Perhaps that will be explored in Matrix Revolutions.

If the concluding chapter delivers that payoff, Reloaded will have been worth the viewing.