Maaaaaaaan, come on... hurry up... let's get this thing out there in the theaters... I'm ready to see it. Enough hype... enough trailers... I'm sold... It better friggin deliver... ARGH... the ten days or so till this movie hits are like molassas...
Corporal Hicks here once again. Being a film student at Loyola Marymount does have its perks. With all the connections the faculty has, you get to see a bunch a stuff for free. As with my last outing: The Matrix.
Let me tell ya, I was lookin' forward to this badboy for a while. Those trailers just simply kick-ass. That 360-degree-freeze-frame stuff looks damn cool. Even if the story was off-kilter(yes, I actually wrote that), I wanted to see this picture. Joel Silver is the producing king of action pictures(well, he and Mr. Bruckheimer). So, when I heard about this screening over at Warner Bros. in Burbank, I instantly picked up my pulse rifle and jumped in the APC with the rest of the grunts.
Anyway, on to the film. The cut they showed was, in fact, the FINAL cut of the film. I'm gonna cut right to the chase: this movie is the textbook example of style-over-substance. But, DAMN, this style is so friggin' cool! The Matrix is made specifically for guys under the age of 35. They have an amazingly original and promising premise(which is too slick to spoil for you guys), but the payoff ain't so great. This much I will tell you: Keanu Reeves plays Neo(aka Thomas Anderson), this super-hacker who is constantly in search of this thing called the matrix. That's all you really need to know. The problem is, there is so much development needed for this far-out plot, that to give it the time it needs would mean making the film about 5 hours long. The film mostly suceeds on the visceral level, which I believe was the idea all along. The visual effects are absolutely amazing. I mean, it rivals, if not betters, the combo of art direction and visual effects on Dark City. The real treat, however, is the sound design. Friggin' awesome. It was SOOOOO loud and clear, it was out of control. I mean, I'm sure that will turn some people off to the movie, but it works extremely well. The sound and sound effects editing are flawless; THEY'RE what brings the audience into the movie. The film's soundtrack does feature a lot of hard-core techno and, given the volume, did tend to get annoying at times(even though I'm a big Rage fan). The music is really intense during the 2000 or so action sequences(they never really seem to end in this one--but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy each and every one of them). There is some truly bad-ass martial arts goin' on in this actioner. I was actually saying "wow!" while I was sitting through some of those scenes; the choreography is amazing. The Wachowski(sp?) brothers, who directed the film, also pay homage to some of the works of the world's best action auteurs. T2 gets recognized in one major action scene and the simple fact that the Beretta is the gun of choice echoes virtually every John Woo movie. The directors were obviously interested in producing tons and tons of eye candy for the audience...and, well, they succeeded. I enjoyed the film. I mean, I wish they would have bothered to answer a few thousand goddamn questions I had, but I was having too much fun to really care. This is the second coolest movie I've seen so far this year(Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels takes number one, at least until this little known space movie opens on May 19--word is, it's supposed to good or somethin'--who knows?). The Matrix is definitely worth a look if you're after some kick-ass, high-adrenaline, lock-the-women-and-children-in-the-basement-and-throw-away-the-key kind of entertainment.
That is all.
Corporal Hicks...signing off
