The Matrix

I might hazard a guess and say he learned kung-fu This is by far the best Matrix film. Probably because it’s the first and the least stale. Not to say the others are bad. I think Smith becomes a greater antagonist by the end of the trilogy. But this is the coolest. This was the film that made stoners in the late 90s think “wait dude, we might be living in a simulation”. Right from the get go you know that something big is going to happen (which it does) and the introduction of the agents is done well, especially Smith. Trinity is cool and you know it when she defeats an entire room of police officers. Because we the audience don’t know much about the Matrix, we can ingest all the things in the intro and realise this film is going to be trippy af. I find the concept of The One to be interesting. It’s a prophecy but where does it come from? Is it through the power of god or is it just a computer predicting someone doing something and the probability of certain outcomes like the Oracle. I don’t know. Agent Smith is probably my favourite character in the film. His performance by Hugo Weaving is very entertaining and the idea of the evil AI henchmen wanting out is very interesting. I personally don’t think he gets enough to do in this film but he still has the screen presence in all of his scenes. The reason he calls Neo, “Mr Anderson” is because his Matrix name dehumanises Neo and reminds him of when he used to be a slave. That is the kind of film evil I love. Also all of the action set pieces are really enjoyable and are aided by a killer soundtrack. In particular, the lobby shootout is unique as I have only seen that level of destruction and style in one other film. Hard Boiled. Possibly the coolest gun-fu movie of all time. This is a definite must watch in terms of cinema history for what it means to it. Some of the CGI holds up but some doesn’t (I am aware it was considered good for the time). It may be light on the sci-fi but it most certainly is.