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Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty) wrote, directed, produced, photographed, edited, and scored Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I’m sure if you look further this jack-of-all-trades also provided coffee and donuts. Coming off his third Spy Kids feature, Rodriguez seems like the hardest working man in showbiz. Mexico, a sequel to 1995’s Desperado, is one tasty burrito of stylish action, vigorous energy and the immensely appealing Johnny Depp.
Depp stars as Sands, an amoral CIA agent who calls Mexico his beat. Through the help of a one-eyed flunky (Cheech Marin), he recruits a mysterious gunman, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), to thwart a coup being lead by Marquez, a military general, and paid for by a drug cartel run by Barillo (Willem Dafoe, a.k.a. the Creepiest Man Alive). Then theres also a retired FBI Agent (Ruben Blades) looking to settle a personal score with Barillo, a Federale (Eva Mendes) looking for some action, a nasty hired gun (Danny Trejo) itching to off a certain Mariachi, Mickey Rourke with a Chihuahua, Enrique Iglesias with a mole, and also the fact that Marquez, who Banderas has been assigned to kill, murdered Banderas wife (Salma Hayek) and daughter. Ill stop so you can catch your breath. Ready? Okay.
You better think ahead and bring a second pair of pants because Depp will charm them right off as he plays yet another oddball. We are delighted with Sands and his multitude of fake mustaches, tacky T-shirts (one actually says CIA) and method of paying people through cash-filled nostalgic lunch boxes. Despite plotting near a Machiavellian level and shooting innocent chefs, the character settles into a lovable anti-hero that transforms into a blind reaper of vengeance. Depp is one of the best, if not the best, actors on the planet. Once again as he did in Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp gives life to a character and nourishes the film every time hes onscreen. This is Depp’s show. Mexico does have a noticeable lull whenever Depp is absent. I don’t know anyone else that could actually become cooler AFTER what he goes through. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and Depp totally owns this movie and the 2003 year.
Banderas is smooth and has never looked better than playing the role of the silent-but-deadly musician. Hayeks role amounts to little more than a cameo. Shes witnessed through flashbacks, but she still has a healthy smolder to her. Blades has the most integrity of all the characters. Most of the actors have fun with their roles, especially the ones that are bad (which accounts for most everyone), but you can’t help but get the feeling that theyre being wasted for the most part.
Rodriguez’s overstuffed film is so delightfully over-the top and loopy that it crackles with an infectious kind of energy. Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a wild and lively cartoon of an action movie with a very healthy sense of humor. Its action relies low on CGI and high on inventive, if slightly self-aware, camera angles and furious gun fights. A sequence involving Banderas and Hayek chained to the wrist and swinging one-by-one down the levels of a building is breathtaking.
What this spaghetti western below the border could have used is a little less of its myriad of twists, double-crosses, triple-crosses, and character subplots. By the time the Day of the Dead rolls on, you might need note cards to keep everything straight. Rodriguez’s earlier Mariachi films were lean on plots which allowed for fun and grandiose action sequences. Perhaps Mexico could have shaved some of these needless characters (cough, Eva Mendes, cough) from its convoluted plot and drawn out its sometimes too quick bursts of stellar action.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a bloody good time. Depp amazes yet again in this bombastically silly yet undeniably fun south o the border shoot-em-up. If Rodriguez has any plans for an additional sequel (and he might given his insane work ethic) I’d recommend following Depp’s Sands character wherever the sands take him. To witness this incredibly cool, whip-smart character cut up in any land would certainly be music to my ears.
Nate’s Grade: B
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S.W.A.T. (2003)
Hey, I got an idea, let’s spend 2/3 of our movie building characters no one cares about, and then we’ll let something action-y happen in the last act? What could possibly go wrong? I got an even better idea, let’s bring along Michelle Rodriguez as a, get this, tough girl cop. Oh yeah, and we need some Samuel L. Jackson too. And let’s have the bad guy be French, since no one likes them right now anyway. Brilliant.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life (2003)
As I type this I feel a slight twinge of guilt about what I feel I have to do. After all, I did interview Angelina Jolie for my college newspaper in the spring. But if I hold back it would be doing a disservice to all those faithful theater patrons that pay upwards of ten dollars for cinematic entertainment. So, just to start off, I’d like to give just a few examples on the idiocy and ribald stupidity of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
SHARK: In the opening sequence our voluptuous adventurer Lara Croft (Jolie) has discovered an underwater temple. Rival raiders kill her crew and damage her underwater equipment. The temple starts to flood and Croft is trapped. So what does she do? She cuts her leg to let the exposed blood draw a shark we had seen previously. She punches the advancing shark in its nose and then rides its dorsal fin as the shark speeds to the surface. What? How can anyone know the direction a shark is going to go? Is it like a friggin elevator; press for up?
HIDE OUT: So the nefarious villain in this sequel is actually a guy who looks a whole lot like Alfred Molina (Frida). This bad guy (his name is Jonathon Reiss if youre inclined, but the name, like the character, are instantly forgettable) is the foremost chef in the field of cooking up new bio-terrorism threats. Put some Ebola with some flu and BAM! Thats one spicy meatball. So he runs this bio-terror outfit in Hong Kong. But he runs it, and I am so not kidding with this, he runs it on the second floor of a shopping mall. Yes, that’s right, a shopping mall. You know, for customer convenience when they want to get something from the Gap, stop by an Orange Julius and then, if they’re up to it, maybe purchase a horrible biological weapon.
SHOOT OUT: What’s even worse than the location of Mr. Bad Guys lair is that Croft and her shady partner Terry Sheridan (Gerald Butler), who also happens to be a dangerous old flame, infiltrate the lab. And what do they and the bad guys proceed to do? Why they have a shoot out in a biological weapons lab! Gee Ms. Croft, hope none of those horribly debilitating biological weapons are airborne. Its like an extreme and humorless update of the bull-in-china-shop metaphor.
WALL: Croft and Sheridan are discussing possible routes to Mr. Bad Guys Hong Kong Bio Lab. Sheridan says the bad guys will be watching all the roads. Croft smirks and says, All but one. Cut to Croft riding a motorcycle on the Great Wall of China. Yes. The Great Wall. Itd be like, Well theres one place the bad guys will never expect us! and then they bungee jump off the Sphinx.
AFRICA: When Mr. Bad Guy finally decodes the map to the location of a desired artifact they witness scenes of an African prairie. Good, he says, It’s in Africa. And then he trots off. Because, you know, it’s not like Africa is a continent or anything. Apparently these people need no more specification.
Tomb Raider 2 is a deeply flawed film. To compare this film, or its predecessor, to any of the Indiana Jones films (even the lowly second one) is just sheer lunacy. Pity Jolie, because this woman just cant get a good script sent her way so she, Croft, and yet again the audience, are saddled with a dumb adventure story that ratchets few thrills. The premise is on Jonathon Reiss (see, I bet you’re ALREADY saying who?) trying to find the location of Pandora’s Box so he can encapsulate the evil inside it and sell it to the highest bidder. Uh, sure, whatever. Did anyone fail to mention that the whole myth of Pandora’s Box centered on the things … being released? So that the only thing remaining in the box was hope? I don’t think hope will go well on the auction block among world terrorists.
An action movie is forgiven its plot trespasses if it can deliver when it comes to the action. Sadly, even the addition of Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) as the director doesn’t seem to squeeze too much juice. Tomb Raider 2 visits lovely locales like Hong Kong, Greece, Africa, but what does it say when the locations are often the most exciting parts of your action film? Excluding one terrific death-defying stunt off a skyscraper, the action for Tomb Raider 2 is just mundane and a little too tidy.
Not everything is bad with the flick. It is better than the first one, but that’s like saying cholera is better than tuberculosis. When the bar is set so low by the first movie its easier to trip over it than ascend it. Butler adds a nice character for Croft to play off of. Sheridan is a fun character because he’s genuinely mysterious and we don’t know which side he’ll eventually turn. Having his character needling Croft about her darker past with him gives the film its best scenes. He does have smoking chemistry with Jolie too. She herself has always seemed a natural with the character. I like Jolie as an actress, I do, but I just wish someone would craft a decent script.
Nate’s Grade: C
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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
This movie is certifiably insane. While a very literary X-Men seems like a great idea, what exactly does Tom Sawyer bring to the table? What, is he going to convince the bad guys to white wash a fence? And yet, this highly operatic bombast almost succeeds on its sheer level of lunacy, like when you realize you’re watching Sawyer get a crush on a vampire on a giant underwater submarine that’s so big it has end tables and vases in its hallways. Still, the handling of Jekyll/Hyde here is what Hulk should have been like. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen almost works, but its falls apart amidst shabby special effects, outlandish plotting, and very wooden dialogue. The director doesn’t make it any easier to follow, trumping his action sequences with rapid fire edits. Ah well, my bafflement was more entertaining.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Arnold is indeed back and it appears that the 55-year-old action star and seven-time Mr. Olympia has saved our summer with the refreshingly retro retread, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Twelve years have passed since the ending of Terminator 2. John Conner (Nick Stahl, replacing Edward Furlong) battles paranoia that at any second the machines of the future could send yet another android assassin back in time (And hes right, because if I was a machine and interested in proficiency, I would just keep doing this every year and eventually one would get it right). So because of these fears, the future hero of the human race is living his life right now like a drifter. He has no phones, no paper trails, and works from place to place never getting too comfortable.
John acting like a bum actually works. The machines cannot find him so they send a slinky new model, the T-X (Kristanna Loken), back in time to off his eventual lieutenants. This new version of the Terminator has the same silvery shape-shifting finish of Robert Patricks T-1000 (as well as the vacant emotionless staring) but now can turn her limbs into an arsenal of weapons at no extra cost. T-X, or Terminatirx, even appears in the window display of a posh clothing store. She appears alongside other manikins and struts her naked stuff along the night streets. So the killing machine of T3 is a blonde woman in red leather so tight it could have been painted on. She looks to be 115 lbs. soaking wet and made of metal. Nevertheless, the T-X is a suitable villain.
One of the names on the T-X list is Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), a vet with a dad in very secretive military projects. Which projects? Well only the creation and operation of sentient computer program SKYNET. Kate meets up with John at her vet office. They also meet the T-X, though why this killing machine would check the vet office and not Kates home is an oddity. But wait, another Terminator (Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time to protect the Conner clan for the third time (It’s becoming so familiar that the Conner family might as well have a T-100 stocking on their fireplace for Christmas). And like that Arnold rescues Kate and John from the evil robotic runway model and the chase is on. Meanwhile a computer virus is crippling the nations electronics and the military is pushing Kates father into making SKYNET operational. But to do so would give full control over the nation’s nuclear instruments to a machine. Can you see some things brewing on the horizon?
T3 is basically a retread of the story of T2 with Arnold’s obsolete model trying to save John on the run from a faster and deadlier Terminator. And you know what? So what I say. T2 was an incredible film brimming with great action sequences beautifully captured. So what better action film to emulate than quite possibly the best action film ever? And T3 fills in quite well. It is so marvelously refreshing to see an action film that doesn’t involve wires, kung-fu, and extensively obvious CGI. CGI should be used to enhance an action sequence, but when it becomes the sole reason an action sequence exists its harder to be drawn in. So when I see Arnold and the T-X rumble in a bathroom, knocking heads through doors and broken porcelain, it’s a total blast because of the sense of realism.
I think part of me would have had a slightly different reaction to T3 if I had not seen the humorless pretension of The Matrix: Reloaded and Hulk. And unlike the earlier summer fare, T3 is an action movie that -are you listening Ang Lee?- ENTERTAINS the audience without boring them. Since when did we enter some parallel realm where our action films were trying to deconstruct the works of Nietzsche and use words like “concordantly” and “ergo”? Where was the turning point when the action fell out of the action film? These statements are not to say that action films would be better brainless (see The Mummy films, go on) but they would certainly be better if they had some humor and a lack of heady posturing. And for all of these reasons, and more, T3 is a solid action film, the kind we need to remind us what action films are and the fun they can bring. Did anyone, and I mean ANYONE have any fun with Hulk? I think a trip to the dentist would have been more exhilarating. Especially if he gassed you and touched your nipples like mine did. This is pure speculation though.
The Terminator franchise took a hit with departing director, and all around King of the World, James Cameron (the only director this franchise has ever known) and stars Linda Hamilton and Furlong opting out. Stahl and Danes are great choices and provide credible weight to their roles and suitable heroics. It’s personally wonderful to see Danes growing up into a confidant and lovely adult actress. I swear she looks older and more mature in this than The Hours even though that art crap was filmed later. Stahl seems to have a habit of getting killed in his films (In the Bedroom, Bully), so that might keep a few more film savvy people on their guard.
The biggest addition is from director Jonathon Mostow (Breakdown, U-571). One of the things Mostow does so effectively is play up humor like no previous Terminator film. The naked entrance of Arnold is a great example of Mostow acknowledging the iconic nature of the films. Mostow also stages incredible action scenes. Thats good too.
What does it say that Arnold is at his best when acting like a machine? I didn’t realize until seeing T3 how welcome it is to watch Arnold strut around in his familiar leather jacket and sunglasses. We might not have known we could use another Terminator flick but while you’ll watching you may think, ”Man it’s been too long, welcome back.” T3 isn’t going to be the benchmark of action like its predecessor is, but the film is a good time.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Johnny Depp is THE MAN. But then, we already knew this. Can’t wait to see more.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
More of the same, except this time all the verve and invention seems stale and reheated. This sequel subscribes to the bigger-better train of thought, so as it continues to get more and more outlandish and the girls become invincible super heroes on par with Neo, the movie tanks hard. Much has been made about Demi Moore’s “comeback” but apparently she wasn’t sharpening her acting muscles during her hiatus. No one said the first Charlie’s Angels movie was within the realm of reality, but in the sequel apparently the Witness Protection Agency has decided to store all their valuable information not in a computer mainframe, a system of files, no, on two magic decoder rings. What the hell? McG returns as director and cranks the style into overkill, set to a radio-friendly soundtrack, but it all seems so ho-hum and excessive at the same time. Quite an accomplishment. No more please.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Hulk (2003)
Comic book movies are all the rage these days. The X-Men films, Spider-Man, even Daredevil all managed some level of success because they were, at their heart, entertaining pulp and treated the source material with some sense of reverence. Now Ang Lee’s monstrous film Hulk lumbers into theaters and one could best describe it as being too serious for its own good.
Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) is the quiet guy, the one who bottles everything inside. His lab partner Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) has recently broken off their relationship due to his emotionally shut-off demeanor. Well Bruce gets hit with a lethal dose of gamma rays and it kicks up something inside him. You see, Bruces long-absent father (Nick Nolte, looking frightfully like his drunken mug shot photo) experimented some kind of regeneration serum on himself. When he fathered Bruce he passed on whatever genetic alteration. So now when Bruce gets mad he turns into a 15-foot raging Jolly Green Giant (the CGI in this movie is not good). He starts enjoying the freedom letting go can bring. Nothing gets him more mad than some yuppie (Josh Lucas, badly miscast) trying to buy out his lab and then kill him to sell his DNA to the military. Along the way, Betty’s father (Sam Elliott) tries to hunt Bruce and his greener-on-the-other-side alter ego for the good of us all.
Director Ang Lee has injected most of his films with a sense of depression and repression, from the biting and darkly astute The Ice Storm to the stoic Gary Cooper-like silence of the aerobatic samurai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He’s a master filmmaker without question. Lee bites off more than he can chew with Hulk much like the gifted Cameron Crowe did with the sci-fi Vanilla Sky. Lee is so damn ambitious that Hulk tries to be everything and it ends up fulfilling nothing. His film is the most ambitious and the most tedious super hero/comic book movie of all time. What does it say when the super green Hulk has more personality than the bland Bruce Banner?
The acting is a non-issue here. Connelly remains one of the most beautiful women in all of movies and has incredibly expressive eyes and brows. She has this strand of hair thats always in the right side of her face. It’s so awkward. Bana gets the least fun part as the mentally scarred kid afraid of his own anger. He doesn’t do much but then he isn’t given much. Elliott overacts with impressive gusto whereas Nolte overacts like every line was his last breath.
After about an hour or so of beleaguered talking and flat characters, I started to become restless. I wanted to see Hulk smash, Hulk smash good. Instead what you get is endless scenes of cheesy speeches, sci-fi babble speech, phony philosophy, and mind-numbingly awful pacing. Seriously, Hulk has worse pacing than glaciers. You’ll see the Mona Lisa yellow faster than this movie will be over. And in some weird paradox, I think it will never be over.
Lee attempts to make the film a living comic book. You’ve never seen this many wipes short of a Brady Bunch marathon on TV Land. Lee splits his screen into multiple panels and slides them around much like the layout of a comic book. However, this visual cue is overused and calls attention to itself in a how arty are we kind of pretentious way. If Hulk was attempting to be a comic book movie, then where the hell did all the action go? This movie could have been subtitled The Hulk Goes to Therapy because everything excluding an over-the-top final act revolves around people working out childhood issues. Man, there’s nothing I like to see more during the summer than a $150 million dollar movie about people working out childhood issues. Oh yeah!
Hulk is an overlong and ambitiously meandering film thats incredibly serious, incredibly labored, and incredibly boring. Someone needs to tell the creators of this film to lighten up. The big-screen adaptation of the big green id may have heavy doses of Freudian psychoanalysis (try and tie THAT with the merchandizing onslaught) but the film is barren when it comes to fun. Even comic book fans should be disappointed. I heard a story of a kid who saw Hulk and asked his mom when the movie was going to start, and she replied, “90 minutes ago.” Should you see Hulk in the theater at full price? No. Instead, give your money to me. It will have more resonance and action than anything this bloated, joyless, self-important vacuum of entertainment could offer.
Hulk mad? Audience mad! Audience leave theater. See other better movies instead. Hulk sad. No Hulk 2. Audience happy.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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The Italian Job (2003)
The Italian Job is equal parts dumb and equal parts entertaining, which makes for fine breezy summertainment. The cast is agreeable, the heist is interesting, the action is full of sexy cars and explosions; I call into question how in the world Jerry Bruckheimer’s name is absent from this. Maybe he’s too busy with his TV work.
The film opens up on a nifty heist in, of all places, Venice. Grizzled old-timer John Bridger (Donald Sutherland) leads his crew for, say it with me now everyone, one last heist. Charlie (Mark Wahlberg) is his second in command and the heir to the thievery throne. The crew steals a safe full of gold bars by applying explosive paint to specific levels of ceilings, causing the safe to drop two floors into the awaiting arms of our scoundrels. The Venice police believe the safe to be riding off in a boat, driven by the crew’s getaway man Handsome Rob (the always good to have Jason Statham). But no the real safe has fallen into the canal and Charlie and John are scuba-safe-crackin’. The crew gets away with their misdeed and toast about their thievery atop a mountainside.
Everything is good. But wait, Steve (Edward Norton) double-crosses his peers and hijacks the gold and kills John. Heres what I dont get. Everyone in the crew is shocked, especially an overactive and whiny Wahlberg (and there’s no worse kind than a whiny Wahlberg). “How could you do this?” whines Whiney Wahlberg. Let me think here. Maybe its because … YOU’RE ALL THIEVES, JACKASS! What was that old saying, no honor among thieves or something. To paraphrase Go, you guys aren’t exactly in a highly ethical industry. There aren’t good thieves and bad thieves; this ain’t no Errol Flynn pic. I would also like to note that everyone in the crew should have known of Steves predestined treachery just by the fact that Norton has a mustache. C’mon, do you need any bigger a sign? Anyway, the van the crew is in drives off a bridge into subzero water. Steve fires some round into the water and believes hes killed his former crew. They of course are not dead and instead are using the scuba gear to breathe. Of course, it’s still subzero temperatures but what does that matter?
We then flash to one year later. Dead John’s not-so-dead daughter, Stella (Theron), conveniently works as a professional safe-cracker to tests security systems. Hmm, I wonder if that will come in handy later. Charlie approaches her with a plan to re-re-re-steal the gold from Steve, the man who, dramatic pause, killed her father. She agrees to help because she wants to see the look on Steve’s face when he finds his money gone. Its probably something very similar to many people over 40 I see now that the stock market is full of price-inflated charlatans.
What follows is Charlie reassembling his crew; Seth Green as the geeky tech dude, Handsome Rob, and Mos Def as the demolitions expert. Together they work out a plan that is part elaborate and part ludicrous, but still entertaining. This is where The Italian Job gets the rules of heist cinema right: 1) Efficient amount of time must be made to plan the heist so the audience knows the steps and every role of importance. 2) The heist must go off for an extended period of time for the audience to enjoy the payoff of watching all the rehearsal proceedings. 3) The heist has got to be done in an interesting way. 4) Not everything has to go according to plan. The only real action sequences in The Italian Job bookend the film, with the opening Venice heists and the later and extended Steve steal. With this said, the end still carries a good sense of payoff for the audience, and watching all of the different elements of the team work together with their own responsibilities builds a sense of attachment to these otherwise undeveloped characters.
I am convinced Mark Wahlberg is a black hole of acting. Sure, he can do Affable Lug fine and dandy as evidenced by Boogie Nights, but when Wahlberg attempts (and that is the operative word) to emote he looks like his leg is caught in a bear trap. His whole bland handsome understatedness isn’t fooling me. Theron is a pretty face but I still havent seen anything shes done to convince me shes anything more. Green is very funny in his geeky role, complaining that he had the original idea for Napster and it was stolen from him by his roommate. Statham and Mos Def round out a likable if slightly one-note crew.
Director F. Gary Gray (The Negotiator) has graduated from the world of music videos but still knows how to stage some exciting scenes. The slick ending heist, with the L.A. gridlock, three trucks to chase after, and fleet of patriotic Minis is a great popcorn action set piece all the more appreciated because of the patient setup the movie has given.
In the days of summer, where some people wrongly consider a bloated and pretentious action film to be entertaining, even if they dont get a lick of it, it’s especially nice to have something like The Italian Job remind us the escapist fun summer flicks can offer. Just don’t worry if Wahlberg looks to be in pain.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Imagine my disappointment as I viewed the highly anticipated sequel to 1999s sci-fi smash The Matrix and learned that the writing and directing team of the Wachowski brothers had taken a page from good ole George Lucas on how to make sequels: the bigger is better and more is more approach. Like the first two Star Wars prequels, the second Matrix movie is overstuffed and unfocused. Unlike the Star Wars prequels, it’s also extremely talky when it comes to psycho-babble that would only impress the bong-carrying peanut gallery.
Reloaded picks up sometime after the first. Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne), Neo (Keanu Reeves), and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) are late for a pow-wow with other leaders including Morpheus former flame, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith). In this meeting, which is within the Matrix, we learn that the humans have discovered that the machines are drilling at an incredible speed and will reach Zion, the last human city far beneath the Earth, in a matter of days. Add this to the bad dreams Neo keeps having where Trinity falls out of a building and gets shot by an Agent, and things are not looking good for our heroes from the first film.
At Zion, Morpheus stokes up the crowd who already believe that Neo is The One in the prophecy of the Oracle (Gloria Foster). They believe he is the one who will lead them to topple the machines. Morpheus informs the many citizens of Zion (okay, the last battalion of the human race lives in caves under the surface and people are STILL wearing sunglasses all the time? Watch your heads.) that the machines are digging to a town near you, and they have 250,000 Sentinels to wipe out what remains of humanity.
So what do people do next; what would your standard response be? Apparently, in Zion, it involves a massive spontaneous, sex-charged rave. The multitudes of Zion start grinding and sweatily dancing to electronic beats. And curiously, as youll notice with the slow camera movement in the scene, NO ONE in the future wears a bra. Perhaps the machines got those too. So after a tremendously long span of raving with nipples, intercut with Neo and Trinity knockin boots (though could you imagine zero-gravity sex in the Matrix?), the heroes set off to find the Oracle once more. Zion is preparing to mount a counterstrike against the burrowing machines and is hopeful that it will buy them some time. They plan on sending the entire fleet out, save Morpheus ship and one or two to aid him in his quest.
Neo finally regroups with the Oracle along a park bench inside the Matrix. She puts forth more psychological babble about choice and how choices are already made before you make them. You may start zoning out and wondering when people are gonna start punching people again, because it takes a good 45-50 minutes to get into this movie. The Oracle does have an interesting tidbit of information however. She reveals that the Matrix if just chock full of rogue programs living out their days in the confines of this virtual reality. Included in this group are werewolves, vampires, ghosts, angels which are all programming errors that walk among the Matrix. So, wouldn’t it be kind of neat to see Neo fight the monsters from Universal Studios (Hey Frankenstein monster … I know kung-fu Fire baaaaaaaaaad!)?
The supreme drawback of Reloaded is that it introduces us to a plethora of new characters, all with minimal screen time and even more minimal plot impact, and then fails to advance the story. Niobe is pointless except for the old action picture adage of being at the right place at the right time to rescue our seemingly doomed heroes. A rogue program that calls himself The Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), who decides on being a European playboy with an accent that renders all speech useless, snoots and huffs his way around. Monica Bellucci plays his wife. This Italian actress can be enthralling, and not just on the eyes, but she also serves minimal purpose other than some heaving chest shots. Then theres the Keymaker, who will somehow lead Neo to his destiny or whatever. Theres about fifteen or so new characters and hardly any of them matter. The coolest additions are the twins, a pair of pasty dreadlocked fighters who can go through walls and parry any enemy assault. More time is needed for these two before they turn into another wasted villain, like Star Wars‘ Darth Maul.
All of this criticism is moot, of course, because the center of The Matrix is on inventive and pulse-pounding action, right? Well I’d say that is so with the 1999 film but its sequel suffers when its action sequences drone on and become repetitious and dull. Neo fighting twenty or so replicates of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) is interesting and fun, but when ninety more show up and its painfully and slightly embarrassing when the people fighting are CGI, then the fun level drops with the film. Neo ends the big brawl by flying away. My friend next to me whispered in my ear once this scene concluded, If he could fly, why didn’t he fly away at the beginning? My response: That would be using your brain. Seriously, this action sequence is nifty and all but it serves no purpose, just like much of the first half of the film.
The freeway chase scene seems to already be famous and with due cause. Trinity and Morpheus zooming through traffic, fighting Agents and the twins, is a fantastic set piece that is reminiscent of the inventive action the first Matrix gave us. When Trinity zooms through oncoming traffic on her motorcycle the film comes alive and my attention was certainly front and center. The scene does fizzle a bit as it segues into Morpheus fighting an Agent atop a speeding semi. Again, the CGI rotoscoping of the landscape and the people is painfully obvious and detracts from the enjoyment.
What ultimately kills The Matrix sequel is that no one had the heart to question if maybe more wasn’t better. Sure the Wachowski brothers had all the riches unto Caesar to make this movie, but what perplexes me is that once we do get much more it only feels like more of the same, and disappointment sets in. Agent Smith is shoved to the side of the film and pops up here and there to glare. He’s more or less just repackaged with nothing new and no personality, like much of the film. The purposely perplexing psycho-babble does not help. Im sure hundreds of websites will dissect the exact philosophical links the movie presents, but man, all this talking about stuff thats shutting down my brain is getting in the way of ass-kicking. I felt bloodlust the more I heard people, usually some old fruitcake, endlessly blab about causality and choice. When it comes to action-packed sequels from 2003, I’ll take X2 any day over Reloaded.
This is not to say that Reloaded is a bad film because it does have some nice special effects, cinematography, and some cool action sequences. These points of interest do not, however, justify its bloated running time. Some things were better left to the imagination, like the city of Zion, which looks about as dreary and dull as you might expect the last bastion of human civilization to look like in a ruined world, but this is science-fiction. Where’s the fun in dreary and dull? Again, whereas the first Matrix took place mainly in the false virtual reality where we could watch fantastic feats defying the laws of physics, Reloaded spends half its time running around the dank real world.
Some moments did have me giggling, like the Merovingian’s joyous creation — an orgasm cake. A woman has a piece of cake and her temperature rises. Finally the camera zooms into her vagina (its in computer-code so its all columns of sexy green numbers) and we see an explosion of light. Very interesting indeed. Essentially, this is a key metaphor for the film itself: an attempt to have its cake and eat it too.
The Matrix: Reloaded is an occasionally entertaining and often mind-numbingly talky summer entry. Youll get some thrills, maybe the philosophy will connect more for some (even though to me, at the heart, they say very little very eloquently), but because The Matrix is a colossal franchise that will make a gazillion dollars and then some, the power of editing has been kicked to the curb. If that power had been present perhaps someone could have trimmed a few of the many peripheral characters, kicked the pace up a few notches, reworked the fight scenes to advance the plot and stopped events from being so repetitive, and while they were at it maybe they could have done away with all the philosophy and stilted love dialogue. As it stands, The Matrix sequel has lost a lot of edge and this is because of the initial success of the first film. Sure, you might have an intermittently good time, but you should have had a great time. The Wachowski brothers had every tool at their fingertips but they became so enamored with fame and fortune that their work of creativity and genius has morphed into a self-indulgent, adolescent (with its hormone driven sexual events and its stoner philosophy), cash cow.
Nate’s Grade: C+
nathanzoebl 
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