“The Matrix” is a visually dazzling cyberadventure, full of kinetic excitement, but it retreats to formula just when it’s getting interesting. It’s kind of a letdown when a movie begins by redefining the nature of reality, and ends with a shoot-out. We want a leap of the imagination, not one of those obligatory climaxes with automatic weapons fire.
The plot involves Neo (Keanu Reeves), a mild-mannered software author by day, a feared hacker by night. He’s recruited by a cell of cyber-rebels, led by the profound Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and the leather-clad warrior Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). They’ve made a fundamental discovery about the world: It doesn’t exist. It’s actually a form of Virtual Reality, designed to lull us into lives of blind obedience to the “system.” We obediently go to our crummy jobs every day, little realizing, as Morpheus tells Neo, that “Matrix is the wool that has been pulled over your eyes–that you are a slave.” The rebels want to crack the framework that holds the Matrix in place, and free mankind. Morpheus believes Neo is the Messianic “One” who can lead this rebellion, which requires mind power as much as physical strength. Arrayed against them are the Agents, who look like Blues Brothers. The movie’s battles take place in Virtual Reality; the heroes’ minds are plugged into the combat. (You can still get killed, though: “The body cannot live without the mind”). “Jacking in” like this was a concept in “Strange Days” and has also been suggested in novels by William Gibson (“Idoru”) and others. The notion that the world is an artificial construction, designed by outsiders to deceive and use humans, is straight out of “Dark City.” Both of those movies, however, explored their implications as the best science fiction often does. “Dark City” was fascinated by the Strangers who had a poignant dilemma: They were dying aliens who hoped to learn from human methods of adaptation and survival.