November (Web-only) 2003 Commentaries Movies & TV

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Film critic David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) calls The Matrix Revolutions "an overstuffed maelstrom of noise and violence, a sound and fury signifying nothing."

DiCerto's review was the one of the first in a series of nay-saying reviews that were posted early on the Internet. He continues, "Though the Wachowskis rein in the existential banter in this third go-round, the stylized carnage remains at full throttle. And while the franchise continues to push the envelope of technical wizardry, it's in inverse proportion to narrative and character development."

Insufficient narrative? Poor character development? With all that filmmakers Larry and Andy Wachowski have to wrap up in this, the conclusion of their trilogy, you would think it would be time for some aggressive storytelling and some answers.

After all, The Matrix Reloaded—the middle chapter of this sci-fi trilogy that was released earlier this year—left us with several cliffhangers. The messianic hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) has discovered not only that the machines enslaving humanity were ruled by a wicked "Architect," but he has also begun to suspect that he might not be humanity's prophesied savior at all. Worse, Neo's been knocked into a sort of coma, drifting somewhere between the Matrix and the "real" machine-dominated world. His lover Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) is anxious. The faith of his most devoted supporter Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) has suffered a devastating blow. And the malevolent "program" called Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) has discovered a way to infect the "real world" by taking over the body of Neo's colleague Bane (Ian Bliss); now Smith seems likely to cause problems for both reality and the Matrix. All the while, powerful squid-like machines called ...