Best Keanu: “Because I choose to.”

In an ideal world, I would give every Matrix movie five stars. But this isn’t an ideal world, because The Matrix Revolutions exists. It’s a bloated, long, battle-heavy movie that carries over none of the good stuff from the previous two. Well, almost none.

“Bloated” may seem like a strange word for a movie that’s merely a respectable two hours long. But it feels like three, because there’s just so much time spent watching the people of Zion battle the machines. I lost track of these characters one, or maybe two, films ago. All I care about is Neo and Trinity and there just isn’t enough of them in this movie.

I wanted to give Revolutions 3.5 stars, but bumped it up to 4 because of what’s redeemable about this movie: Trinity’s moving death scene, the exciting final fight between Neo and the Smiths, and Sati.

Sati and Rama Kandra almost make this movie for me. Those early scenes where Neo is stuck on the subway platform, between the human and machine worlds, make us think we’re going to get something amazing out of the following two hours. But Revolutions never actually delivers.

Reloaded and Revolutions could easily have been combined into a single film with a running time under 3 hours, but that’s not the way things played out.

Still, I guess for me Revolutions — on my second viewing, at least, but I didn’t recall much from my first viewing more than a year ago — did bring up some random interesting stuff.

For one, the early scenes in the fetish club of the Merovingian brought back an old memory. My mind strayed back to Bound, a 1996 movie that the Wachowskis also made. I didn’t realize Bound was a Wachowski piece until years later, maybe not even until this past year. It was their first film, released three years before the original Matrix.

Unlike with The Matrix, I loved Bound. I loved the protagonists, who were bold and unapologetic in their pursuit of a lesbian affair. I still remember Gina Gershon’s question: “What are you doing?” and Jennifer Tilly’s response: “Isn’t it obvious? I’m trying to seduce you.”

The Matrix Revolutions could have used some good lesbian sex. Or really just about anything other than the transformers trying to fight the machines. Machines fighting other machines. Or something.

But still, four stars, because with all its flaws it’s still a big budget, sincere movie, with stuff that goes on. It’s watchable. Plus, it’s Neo and Trinity and Keanu and Carrie-Anne. One can overlook the fact that Morpheus gets lost in the shuffle, Niobe is just kind of there, and for some reason, like with Matrix Reloaded, this movie also has Cornel West. (What is Cornel West doing in a Wachowski movie? Or in two Wachowski movies?).

Keanu is fantastic, but he’s not in it all that much. It’s weird to analyze in retrospect; Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are the leads in these movies, but it feels like they don’t get as much screen time as they should. The other characters everyone’s forgotten about, like Roland and the miscellaneous crew of people trying to fight the machines, seem to be in more scenes. It’s weird that the Matrix sequels don’t actually follow Neo. They correct that in Matrix Resurrections, but that was almost 20 years coming.

I liked the raindrops on Neo’s face in the final fight scenes. Sometimes, this movie looks really cool, and the rain drops just about did it for me. Not as much as Rama Kandra talking about love and karma. But it did it for me.

One last note, another John Wick connection. The Merovingian offers to give up Neo in exchange for the eyes of the Oracle. He says rumour has it they cannot be taken, only given. Which made me think of John Wick: Chapter 4 when The Tracker says to Caine, “guess your deal didn’t work out either. Shame they took your eyes though.” To which Caine responds: “They didn’t take them. I gave them.” Every time I saw John Wick: Chapter 4 I puzzled about what that line actually meant. Now I think I know: it’s an oblique Matrix reference, like the green hue in the nightclub in John Wick and Santino D’Antonio eating steak in Chapter 2.

It all comes back to the Matrix, in one way or another.

May 2023