Short Take: The Matrix

Too many have taken The Matrix way too seriously. The philosophical mumbo-jumbo it wears on its sleeve—little more than Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as filtered through Philip K. Dick—is tony decoration for the pulp material. It’s not anything profound. But the film is still a masterpiece of the science-fiction adventure genre. The Wachowskis, the sibling duo who wrote and directed, have created a stylish cyberpunk mash-up of Dick’s postmodern mystery-sf fiction with superhero comic books and video games. They season it with leather-heavy goth couture and fight scenes inspired by East Asian martial-arts movies. The story’s hero, nicknamed Neo (Keanu Reeves), has two challenges. The first is to solve the mystery that defines the reality around him. The second is to embrace his destiny as the messiah of the film’s dystopian world. Along the way, he joins up with a band of revolutionaries led by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who are determined to help him find his way. The film’s glory is its virtual-reality action sequences, where the only limits are the characters’ imaginations. These scenes are terrifically well-staged and edited, and shot in a hyperreal manner that makes the film look like nothing that had come before. It all adds up to a thrilling roller-coaster ride, and perhaps the finest adventure film of the 1990s. The cast also includes Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano. Dick Pope provided the cinematography, and the editing is by Zach Staenberg. John Gaeta designed the innovative visual effects. Two pompous, overblown sequels followed.