Kinetic joy in 'The Matrix'

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a software programmer in a world very much like our own who goes by his nighttime hacker moniker of Neo, has heard the Matrix whispered about his whole life, but no one knows what it is. All the beautiful Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss of TV's Dark Justice) can tell him is that "it's looking for you," which is certainly scary but not a great deal of help.

For that, Neo has to turn to Trinity's partner, the legendary Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), considered the most dangerous man alive by the authorities. What he says is more than frightening: What Neo thinks is the real world is no more than a computer-generated dreamscape, a virtual reality created by the artificial intelligence that really controls things to distract our human minds while our bodies are systematically plundered as an energy source to keep those nefarious machines up and running.

Sometimes those machines take human form as agents, robotic parodies of FBI men, like the chilling Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving of Proof and The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert), who wear security earpieces, way-cool sunglasses and white shirts with ties and are terrifyingly close to indestructible.

These Matrix men have a special interest in Neo. There's a feeling in the air, one that Morpheus and his ragtag colleagues (including Bound veteran Joe Pantoliano) are tempted to share, that Neo might be The One, the foretold liberator who has the power to destroy the Matrix and free the human race. But only the Oracle (a fine cameo by Gloria Foster) knows for sure, and everything she says is, well, oracular.

Obviously, there's a great deal that's familiar about The Matrix, starting with its sturdy themes of alternate realities, the deadly rivalry between men and machines, the resilient power of the human mind and the creeping dangers of conformity. And the film's fake-Zen dialogue, lines like "Don't think you are; know you are" and "There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path," isn't going to win any ovations for originality.

On the other hand, the sombre quality of the dialogue suits the apocalyptic quality of the story, and the gravity of the actors, especially the always magisterial Fishburne and the magnetically phlegmatic Reeves, makes the words more bemusing than bothersome.

Helping most of all are the riveting visuals shot by Bill Pope.

`Matrix' uses the `wire fighting' technique used in kungfu movies such as `Drunken Master' and `Fist Of Legend' to give its fight sequences that distinctive high-flying look.

The Wachowskis do have a taste for the bizarre (witness an electronic bug which turns into a body-piercing insect) but this tendency pays off in bravura moments like a mesmerising vista of a body farm without end (inspired by the work of comic book artist Geof Darrow) where humans are relentlessly harvested for energy.

Just as exciting are The Matrix's two kinds of action sequences. One strata involves John Woo-type expenditures of massive amounts of ammunition shot in super slow-motion and the other uses both Hong Kong-style stunt work and a technique the press notes refer to as "bullet-time photography" that involved shooting film at the computer-aided equivalent of 12,000 frames per second.

The Matrix cast members who were involved in the film's eye-catching kungfu fight sequences also apparently committed to four months of pre-production work with Hong Kong director and stunt coordinator Yuen Wo Ping, someone who specializes in the technique, known as wire fighting, that gives films like Drunken Master, Once Upon A Time In China and Fist Of Legend their distinctive high-flying look.

Not everything in The Matrix makes even minimal sense, but the Wachowski brothers, said to be major fans of comic books and graphic novels, are sure-handed enough to smoothly pull us over the rough spots.

When a film is as successful as this one is at hooking into the kinetic joy of adrenalised moviemaking, quibbling with it feels beside the point. - LAT-WP

General screening for The Matrix will begin on May 6.