The Matrix
Reloaded
Director: Andy and Larry WachowskiSo, the first Matrix movie came out and everyone was all excited because it was a high tech action movie that had a really intelligent plot to back up its state-of-the-art special effects scenes. Now the film's initial sequel, Matrix Reloaded, has been released by Warner Home Video as a two-platter Widescreen Edition (28648, $30), and fans balk at its entertainment because it has an even more intelligent narrative, but the action scenes don't quite rip open a new envelope of effects. What gives? Do people want smart movies, or don't they? The film is absolutely thrilling from an epistemological standpoint. At its core, it is a grownup version of Tron, but at the same time that it is presenting these fabulous digital metaphors about choice and existence, it is also constantly turning in on itself to question its own questions and to search for the parameters that a conscious mind must use to define itself. There is a good romance as well, thanks to an adept performance by Carrie-Anne Moss, who can convey a complete sense of desire toward the Keanu Reeves hero without seeming the least compromised by her passion, even as she risks her life to rescue him. All of this and an orgy of car crashes, too. How can you lose?
Some folks have complained that because the action takes place in a virtual world, the film is less involving than regular movies, but anyone who can follow the story can see that the stakes are just as high in the fight scenes as they would be in a real environment, especially since, viscerally, it is real enough. In attempting to outdo its eye-opening predecessor, the fight scenes are obligated to become bigger. They cannot be as astonishing as they were in the first film - when a viewer was just learning what the rules were - but to compensate they are more elaborately balletic, so that the conflict between the hackers and the programs they are battling becomes as intricate as the point and counterpoint of dueling musicians frantically attempting to out-strum one another. The Matrix was one of those rare movies that redefined popular fashion, and the sequel is obligated to continue its designs, even though the toe-tapping impatience of trendsetters waits for no one, least of all a sequel. The directors, Andy and Larry Wachowski, however, countered that problem at the inception of the series, because all of the fashion in the film is in black, and black will never go out of style. It doesn't even fade.
The letterboxing has an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks super, with a finely detailed clarity in all lighting situations. The DVD's sound is good, but not great. Warner has not opted for a DTS track, so the best the DVD can offer is a standard 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track. There are distinctive separations throughout the film, good subwoofer activity and a typically busy wall of sound once anything really gets started. The audio isn't as consistently vivid as it is on the best DVD soundtracks, but it is elaborate enough to support the rest of the entertainment quite adequately. The 138-minute program (including the teaser for the second sequel, which appears after the end credits as it did in the theaters) has an alternate French audio track in 5.1 Dolby and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Although the DVD is a two-platter set, it seems clear that it has been created just to hold fans over until a more elaborate edition can become available. The second platter has one great component, a 31-minute featurette about the staging of the freeway chase scene, in which the filmmakers built their own expressway and populated it with stunt drivers. Other than that, there is a standard 22-minute promotional documentary, a pointless 5-minute promotional piece about the cartoon and game spin-offs, a tolerable 10-minute segment about the creation of commercials using the Matrix environment, a decent 28-minute production documentary about the video game, and a very amusing 10-minute intro to the 2003 MTV Movie Awards that features Jason Timberlake and Seann William Scott, trapped in the Matrix Reloaded world.
