This movie is a relic of the year 2002, before the Wachowski Brothers had put an irrevocable nail in the coffin of the Matrix franchise by delivering a poor second movie and a really awful third one.
The movie lifts so many things from the Matrix that it's difficult to list them all. Furthermore, it mostly lifts them pretty badly, and the budget is obviously about 100 times less than that of the Matrix. A sense of camp goofiness suffuses the entire affair, from the overly dramatic lighting, to the citizens standing in neat rows looking at a giant video screen with a talking head on it, to the high-concept premise itself. In one way it's like the Showgirls of early-21st century science fiction movies.
Nevertheless, the film is fun. It's mostly saved by the stellar performance of Christian Bale in the lead, who has clearly been told, "OK, put on this outfit that we stole from Neo in the Matrix. Now act exactly like Keanu Reeves." Fortunately, Bale is good at doing this, and is generally a better actor than the robotic Reeves.
The supporting cast all put in some excellent work as well. Probably the most engaging part of the movie is watching them gamely play along and put in serious hard work as the story gets more and more ridiculous. I was very impressed by their professionalism.
Probably my favorite scene involves a character who kills at least eight people to save a little puppy (said puppy seems to be played in some scenes by a rather unconvincing hand puppet). What a moral statement for the ages -- along with the timeless message, "ruthlessly destroying all forms of art and literature in order to eradicate emotion from humankind... would be WRONG." Campy entertainment.
The movie lifts so many things from the Matrix that it's difficult to list them all. Furthermore, it mostly lifts them pretty badly, and the budget is obviously about 100 times less than that of the Matrix. A sense of camp goofiness suffuses the entire affair, from the overly dramatic lighting, to the citizens standing in neat rows looking at a giant video screen with a talking head on it, to the high-concept premise itself. In one way it's like the Showgirls of early-21st century science fiction movies.
Nevertheless, the film is fun. It's mostly saved by the stellar performance of Christian Bale in the lead, who has clearly been told, "OK, put on this outfit that we stole from Neo in the Matrix. Now act exactly like Keanu Reeves." Fortunately, Bale is good at doing this, and is generally a better actor than the robotic Reeves.
The supporting cast all put in some excellent work as well. Probably the most engaging part of the movie is watching them gamely play along and put in serious hard work as the story gets more and more ridiculous. I was very impressed by their professionalism.
Probably my favorite scene involves a character who kills at least eight people to save a little puppy (said puppy seems to be played in some scenes by a rather unconvincing hand puppet). What a moral statement for the ages -- along with the timeless message, "ruthlessly destroying all forms of art and literature in order to eradicate emotion from humankind... would be WRONG." Campy entertainment.