![]() ![]() ![]() Fishburne's Morpheus does what he can to explain how the villain of a film can be ''a neural interactive simulation'' and that the Matrix is everywhere, enforced by sinister morphing figures in suits and sunglasses. Reeves's beautiful, equally androgynous co-star, Carrie-Anne Moss in Helmut Newton cat-woman mode, propagating in the future looks to be all business.) The film happily leads him through varying states of awareness, much of it explained by Laurence Fishburne in the film's philosophical-mentor role. We know even before Neo does that his role in saving the human race will be a biggie. Nonetheless whatever recycling the brothers do here is canny enough to give ''The Matrix'' a strong identity of its own. Neat tricks here echo ''Terminator'' and ''Alien'' films, ''The X-Files,'' ''Men in Black'' and ''Strange Days,'' with a strong whiff of ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in the battle royale being waged between man and computer. The most salient things any prospective viewer need know is that Keanu Reeves makes a strikingly chic Prada model of an action hero, that the martial arts dynamics are phenomenal (thanks to Peter Pan-type wires for flying and inventive slow-motion tricks), and that anyone bored with the notably pretentious plotting can keep busy toting up this film's debts to other futuristic science fiction. In a film that's as likely to transfix fans of computer gamesmanship as to baffle anyone with quaintly humanistic notions of life on earth, the Wachowskis have synthesized a savvy visual vocabulary (thanks especially to Bill Pope's inspired techno-cinematography), a wild hodgepodge of classical references (from the biblical to Lewis Carroll) and a situation that calls for a lot of explaining. Though the wildest exploits befall this film's sleek hero, most of its reality is so virtual that characters spend long spells of time lying stock still with their eyes closed. THE MATRIX MOVIEAiming their film squarely at a generation bred on comics and computers, the Wachowskis stylishly envision the ultimate in cyberescapism, creating a movie that captures the duality of life a la laptop. So it's understandable that ''The Matrix,'' a furious special-effects tornado directed by the imaginative brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski (''Bound''), couldn't care less about the spies, cowboys and Rambos of times gone by. ![]() Action heroes speak volumes about the couch-potato audiences that they thrill. ![]()
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