Since realizing his abilities as "The One," Neo has become more of a threat to the Matrix, and he and Morpheus' crew have become legends in their own time. But a new threat faces Zion, the last human city: the robotic sentinels have narrowed down the city's location and are beginning to dig their way through the earth's crust. If they burrow through to Zion, humanity will be eradicated. While Commander Lock, Zion's military leader, advocates frontal assault as a defense, Morpheus proposes unleashing the power of The One to stop the machines. Not everyone in Zion believes in Neo's power (though a sizable portion of the population worships him), but Morpheus wins over Zion's leaders. Neo has a fateful meeting with the Oracle, and discovers that she's not a human jacked into the system like his is, but an independent program running within the Matrix. She sets him on a path to find and free another part of the program, a man known only as the Keymaker, who can give Neo access to the Source - the mainframe that controls all of the machines. Once there, however, Neo realizes that there will be a heavy cost for saving Zion, if it can be saved at all.

I remember saying, after The Matrix's two sequels were initially announced, that the original movie worked so well as a self-contained story that it didn't need one. Nevertheless, The Matrix Reloaded expands the original story's universe considerably, presents us with fascinating questions of free will vs. going through the motions of playing out actions that were predetermined long ago, and blows up a lotta shit.

In some ways, it's that clash-of-philosophies that really defines The Matrix Reloaded - whereas the original movie gave us the complete package of both of its opposing viewpoints and a resolution that trumpted the virtues of one over the other, this movie is a cliffhanger - and as such is missing the resolution. The Oracle, the rogue Agent Smith, the Merovingian and the Architect (is it just me or do these people sound like Time Lords?) all present their own takes on the free-will debate - but we don't know which philosophy will win the day. And though some people are criticizing other aspects of the movie, that it ultimately why I think some moviegoers didn't dig Reloaded - it didn't hand them the answer to these questions on a plate. It also, perhaps, does not illustrate them as well as The Matrix did.

It talks about them. A lot. Only this time, the action sequences seem oddly offset from the plot-forwarding exposition. Done talking with the Oracle? Good, it's time to fight off six hundred clones of Hugo Weaving - doesn't have much to do with the plot, but it sure looks cool! That said, I'm not sure why so many were disgruntled about Reloaded's open ending - for God's sake, people, we knew this would be a trilogy, with the third and final chapter due this winter. It's not like The Empire Strikes Back, which snuck up behind audiences with the double crowbar blow to the shoulders of Vader's real identity and Han Solo being taken prisoner. I was fully expecting the cliffhanger, and wasn't phased by it. In fact, the last 20-30 minutes of the movie more closely followed the structure of a TV cliffhanger than a motion picture - I almost feel like we're waiting for the next season of The Matrix, not the next sequel.

The action sequences themselves were impressive, though sometimes a bit of an exercise in excess. There's at least an element of humor to the zillions-of-Smiths fight, with Weaving getting in such immortal lines as "More...me!", and the numerous inevitable bowling-a-strike martial arts moves that ensue. With its numerous painful-wince-inducing crashes through walls, park benches and whatnot, that scene was my favorite of the action scenes by far. The huge car chase at the end better illustrates my point about a disconnect between the action setpieces and the furthering of the plot (not that it doesn't have its own humor, what with Trinity reminding Morpheus that trying to escape via the 101 is tantamount to suicide); the same holds true for the bladed weapon fight as Morpheus and Trinity hustle the Keymaker to (relative) safety. We never learn what the hell's up with the albino twins (and we are getting most aggravated about that), and...well, they do blow up a lotta shit, don't they? That gleeful, no-consequences nihilism has bugged me since the original movie, but here, as Morpheus and Trinity trash an entire freeway full of traffic to make their escape, they (and, to be fair, their pursuers) undoubtedly wind up killing a lot of unsuspecting people who otherwise would've been just fine plugged into the system until someone freed their minds. Sure, there's The Matrix's insinuation that the system agents could take over any or all of those hapless drivers in order to capture their prey, but to me the wanton destruction represents that many fewer potential future allies to the cause of freeing humanity. Or maybe I'm looking into things too deeply for a movie that's really about blowing up a lotta shit.

(For the record, I don't normally assume that sort of vacuous turn of phrase in my reviews, for those who haven't read my past work - that's just my clever little stylistic trick to point out that some of the action scenes, while impressive, ring just a little bit hollow.)

Hollow might be a word that could be applied to the acting in the movie as well - everyone's just too damned cool, calm and collected here. Hugo Weaving, as Smith, really gets to show the most versatility here. The Kid and new Nebuchadnezzar operator Link run a close second in the personality department, while the "big three" - Neo, Morpheus and Trinity - get to show little flashes of personality, but not much more than that. (My favorite Neo line is "You could've just asked" afrter the Oracle's guardian engages in a fierce martial arts fight with him to determine if he's The One.)

Also nice, for the fanboys (like me) who bothered to watch both, are the deft little tips of the hat to The Animatrix DVD: the final flight of the Osiris is referenced here, and we also see what became of "the kid," a free mind Neo liberated from a listless skater-punk existence. You don't have to have seen The Animatrix to get the full effect, but if you have, it's a nice bit of extra flavoring, though I found it funny that the kid turned out to be such a puppy-dog disciple of Neo's. In a roundabout way, this brings me back to one of my favorite parts of the movie - the scenes set in Zion. The action scenes are really more of the same but bigger from the original, but the Zion scenes are universe-building material that adds a lot of character - the humans living in Zion party down like there's no tomorrow - maybe because there might not be, and maybe because it's all they've got left. There was something appealing and engrossing about Zion's bizarre mix of technologies (virtual air traffic controllers vs. steam/coal-age ironworks at the city's lowest levels), and it was equally interesting to see what kind of government the citizens of Zion have - and how they feel about such characters as Morpheus and Neo.

Finally, musically speaking, the combination of Don Davis and Juno Reactor for the movie's score was an inspired pairing. The music behind the Neo/Smith fight may be the uniquely Matrix-esque combination of traditional scoring and hardcore techno at its peak. I'll get around to reviewing the soundtrack separately, but let's just say that I could listen to that Burly Brawl track from disc two all day - and drive about 140mph the whole time, much to the chagrin of the cops setting up a roadblock for me.

So ultimately, does The Matrix Reloaded hit or miss? We won't know where the story's going until later this year, but we can't wait for Revolutions before we know how good this one is. So I'll call it a near-miss - it's still hugely entertaining, even just as a summer popcorn movie that blows up a lotta shit. The spectacle isn't really achieved at the expense of the story, but it's more of a distraction - it seemed at times like there were two movies going on simultaneously here. Luckily, I liked them both on some level.

• screenplay by Andy & Larry Wachowski
• directed by Andy & Larry Wachowski
• music by Don Davis
• Cast: Keanu Reeves (Neo), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), Harold Perrineau (Link), Jada Pinkett Smith (Niobe), Anthony Zerbe (Councillor Hamann), Randall Duk Kim (The Keymaker), Lambert Wilson (Merovingian), Harry Lennix (Commander Lock), Nona Gaye (Zee), Gloria Foster (The Oracle), Ray Anthony (Power Station Guard), Christine Anu (Kali), Andy Arness (Police #2), Alima Ashton-Sheibu (Link's Niece), Helmut Bakaitis (The Architect), Steve Bastoni (Soren), Don Batee (Vector), Monica Bellucci (Persephone), Daniel Bernhardt (Agent Johnson), Valerie Berry (Priestess), Ian Bliss (Bane), Liliana Bogatko (Old Woman), Michael Budd (Zion Controller), Stoney Burke (Bike Carrier Driver), Kelly Butler (Ice), Josephine Byrnes (Zion Virtual Control Operator), Noris Campos (Woman with groceries), Collin Chou (Seraph), Paul Cotter (Corrupt), Marlene Cummins (Old Woman), Attila Davidhazy (young Thomas Anderson at 12), Essie Davis (Maggie), Terrell Dixon (Wurm), Nash Edgerton (Security Guard #5), David Franklin (Maitre D'), Austin Galuppo (young Thomas Anderson at 4), Daryl Heath (A.P.U. Escort), Roy Jones Jr. (Ballard), Malcolm Kennard (Abel), David A. Kilde (Agent Jackson), Christopher Kirby (Mauser), Peter Lamb (Colt), Nathaniel Lees (Mifune), Tony Lynch (Computer Room Technician), Robert Mammone (AK), Joshua Mbakwe (Link's Nephew), Matt McColm (Agent Thompson), Scott McLean (Security Bunker Guard #2), Chris Mitchell (Power Station Guard), Steve Morris (Computer Room Guard), Tory Mussett (Beautiful woman at Le Vrai), Rene Naufahu (Zion Gate Operator), Robyn Nevin (Councillor Dillard), David No (Cain), Genevieve O'Reilly (Officer Wirtz), Socratis Otto (Operator), Montaņo Rain (young Thomas Anderson at 8), Adrian Rayment (Twin #2), Neil Rayment (Twin #1), Rupert Reid (Lock's Lieutenant), David Roberts (Roland), Shane C. Rodrigo (Ajax), Nick Scoggin (Gidim Truck Driver), Kevin C. Scott (18 Wheel Trucker), Tahei Simpson (Binary), Frankie Stevens (Tirant), Nicandro Thomas (Young Thomas Anderson at 2), Gina Torres (Cas), Andrew Valli (Police #1), Steve Vella (Malachi), John Walton (Security Bunker Guard), Clayton Watson (Kid), Cornel West (Councillor West), Leigh Whannell (Axel), Bernard White (Rama-Kandra), Anthony Wong (Ghost)