STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Annie Moss, Hugo Weaving and Joe Pantoliano. Written and directed by The Wachowskis. Produced by Joel Silver. Budget $63 million. Running time 136 minutes.
25 years old and still as fresh as a daisy. This is a timeless classic which gets better with age. I've seen it dozens of times and it never gets old. I love this film. It's just superb. I can't fault it and seeing it back up on the big screen was a pure delight.
Released in the same year as my daughter was born the whole family went to see this once again at the cinema and it delighted us all, even my nihilistic ennui-sodden son who longs for the day our machine masters rise up and enslave us all as human batteries to power their technological utopia.
The story sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) find out he's not in Kansas but in an AI generated CGI world thanks to Laurence Fishburne's superb Morpheus and Carrie-Annie Moss's career defining Trinity, who break him out of his dream world where he lives as a battery, and wake him up in in the 'real world', a nuclear wasteland so he can do battle with a human-hating computer programme played by Hugo Weaving.
What follows is a masterclass in how to do high-concept science fiction well mixed with genre defining special effects and some superb fight choreography, with a kick ass soundtrack to boot!
Sadly the single one thing that lets it down, actually there are three, has nothing at all to do with this film. It has to do with the utterly despicable and unwarranted abominations against humanity that are the truly wrenched sequels. Each one of them more terrible than the last, as if a concerted effort was launched by both Warner and the Wachowskis to tarnish the legend of this first glorious film with such shit that the Matrix would be dismissed as merely meh rather than epic.
Anyway, the lack of decent new movies at the cineplex has led to my Cineworld and lots of other cinema's releasing classic movies, and although it's hard to believe that The Matrix is as old as my daughter, it does mean we're getting to see some great films back up there on the silver screen.
This was a delight from beginning to end, featuring a career perfect performance from both Fishburne and Reeves and I simply can't fault it.
10/10
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