Dave's Blog

{5/5} “There is no spoon.”

Neo is a hacker who knows that something’s wrong with the world. He’s approached by some mysterious people, Trinity and Morpheus, who say they can tell him the truth about the world — if he’s ready to hear it. The truth is that he’s been living in the Matrix, a computer program intended to keep humans under control. In the real world Neo and everyone else are asleep, living in pods, generating electricity for the machines.

The Matrix was released in 1999. It’s one of my favourite movies and I’ve seen it 4 or 5 times.

The movie grabs you from the opening scene and doesn’t let go. If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for?

At the beginning you’re wondering what the deal is with this strange world, and what the Matrix is. You get the answer about a quarter of the way through, and then you’re wondering how they’re going to defeat the machines.

Some parts of the movie are action packed and other parts are full of fascinating ideas. It’s a serious story, but there’s some humour.

I usually find fight scenes boring but the ones in this movie are exciting.

It’s visually stunning, and elements like “bullet time” have been copied in many other movies. The characters are very stylish when they’re in the Matrix — you’ll feel like wearing an all-black outfit afterwards.

The mysterious music is by Don Davis (Bound). The song at the end is “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine.

Keanu Reeves (The Lake House) plays Neo and Laurence Fishburne (Just Cause) plays Morpheus. Carrie-Anne Moss (Snow Cake) plays Trinity and Hugo Weaving (The Lord of the Rings) plays Agent Smith. Joe Pantoliano (Memento) plays Cypher.

The movie was directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. They co-directed Cloud Atlas.

The Matrix has 2 sequels, but they were disappointing and I won’t be watching them again.