Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Science fiction writers regularly make questionable science essential in their works, taking the risk that knowledgeable audiences will not accept their contraventions of logic and the laws of physics. Nearly everyone accepts faster than light travel, perhaps because they think we just don’t know enough to preclude it, or more likely, because it is a relatively harmless suspension of disbelief essential for meeting aliens in distant reaches of the galaxy without making boring thousand-year voyages.

The question is: where do you draw the line? For me, Star Trek’s "transporters" are just ridiculous devices for driving plot: a broken transporter means folks will have to fend for themselves, and a working transporter means a deus ex machina rescue from from the clutches of doom. It works for some people but not for me.

Logical Flaws and Shortcomings of Imagination Leave Me Cold

I’ve seen The Matrix many times, and I continue to be blown away by its stunning visual style and action sequences. Like all true Americans, I love the quest for freedom amid the rain of spent shell casings. Yet, the flaws in logic leave me wishing the writers had been more imaginative.

The overall premise is fantastic: what we humans experience as reality is actually an elaborate virtual reality fed directly into our brains by a hyperintelligent race of machines. In "real" reality, each of us is maintained in a small cocoon whose purpose is to harvest our bioelectricity. We’re really just tiny cells in a big battery which is essential for powering the machines.

Simplify

So the first question is, "If these machines are so smart, why haven’t they figured out that they can maintain their human batteries without such an elaborate virtual reality?" Why not just reduce the virtual reality to a simple iron age existence, or better yet, a coma, an existence free of Matrix-threatening computer hackers? Probably because the audience can identify better with a big city computer programmer/hacker than a guy sitting around in a cave or one who’s just plain unconscious. Fair enough.

Fight in Cyberspace

The next question is "Why does the fight between human and machine occur in cyberspace?" Anyone who’s had fun at a virtual reality arcade knows his/her "gunshots" have no effect in the real world. In particular, nothing you do in cyberspace will actually affect the computer generating the virtual reality. In real space you could walk up and hit it with a brick, but in cyberspace, you are powerless against it. Unless, of course, you can use your link with it to hack it. So, all the gunfights and martial arts displays in The Matrix are really metaphors for hacking, and Neo’s ability as "The One" is to get through The Matrix’s firewall and somehow gum up the works of its real computers. Wouldn’t it have been easier to drive the Nebukudnezzer over to the Matrix server farm and plant a bomb?

Run for a Hard Line or Die in Cyberspace

There are two more devices that really bugged me. First is the repeated chases to the "hard line" telephones that the characters must use to extract themselves from virtual reality. All I can say is, it’s virtually reality, folks. Just turn it off. We all know you’re just sitting in a chair in Morpheus’s ship.

Second, and more problematical, is the notion of "injuries" and "death" in virtual reality. I have no doubt that a susceptible person could die in his sleep because of a nightmare induced heart attack. I also have no doubt that a dream of being shot will not leave a bullet wound. The film’s glib pronouncement that the brain controls the body, and therefore, that action in cyberspace can cause death just leaves me wondering why the writers couldn’t think of a better way to generate suspense and identification.

What Are We Gonna Do With All These D-Cells?

One more copout is the film’s lack of consideration about the practicalities of "the liberation." Thankfully, it ends before we have to watch millions of people being disgorged by their cocoons and stumbling blindly into a completely incomprehensible real world. Of course, the idea of rehabilitating millions of people whose only real job has been as a D-cell, just isn’t very interesting, at least to the crew who wrote this film.

The Acting

This is a big budget action film, so no one expects much from the actors, and they deliver on that promise. Fishburne is the best of the lot, but for some reason, his delivery is so ponderous that you want to fast-forward over much of it. His elaboration of a zen-like philosophy may be interesting to some, but it’s pretty basic stuff that we’ve heard in many other films, Grasshopper.

Reeves shows once again that he can walk through a scene without seeming to be touched or involved at all in what’s going on. Moss is a bit more interesting, and not just because she spends the whole film in a tight black leather ensemble. Unlike Reeves, she actually seems to be emotionally involved.

For me, the only acting treat was Hugo Weaving, whose deadpan and subtly alien portrayal of one of The Matrix’s cyber agents, was a welcome relief from Reeves detachment.

Bottom Line

This film is a visual and auditory masterpiece that broke new ground in the rendition of over the top action sequences. For that reason alone, it’s worth seeing. On the other hand, the creativity and plausibility of its science fiction underpinnings are both weak. Folks who believe, as I do, that intellectual rigor is crucial in the construction of top notch science fiction, will be disappointed.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older