the matrix: revolutions – 2 stars

vs.

reservoir dogs – 5 stars

i had the pleasure of seeing both these films on the big screen in the space of a week, and that proximity will make for a great comparison. i see it as huge budget gone wrong versus small budget gone brilliantly right.

first, the matrix. my primary reason for not hating it for falling so short of what it could have been, is that the opinions of everyone who saw it before i did set my revised expectations so low it actually didn’t seem all that bad. still, not a very positive review.

and you know what, it doesn’t deserve one. the primary action scenes were all cartoony fighting robots, and the ones that weren’t were too scarce, too short, or too similar to what they’d done in the past two movies to ever get me honestly excited. if the melodramatic delivery from the whole cast wasn’t making me wince, then a lot of what they were saying made me laugh at them instead of care about them. this is all really harsh i know, but the first one was groundbreaking, the second one was at least entertaining, and this one just fizzled out as far as the series is concerned. i get the sense that after the first flick the wachowskis tried to do so much with this world they created that they lost sight of making a tight sci-fi action movie that really worked not seen through the lenses of matrix fandom. there are so many plot holes and unexplained dialogue i’m wondering if they’re being vague simply so that people will pay to see the next 3 matrix movies hoping to get any clue what the hell they’re talking about. well, nice try guys, but after this i’m done.

it just kills me that they probably spent millions of dollars and hundreds of hours making action scenes with human robots shooting at evil robots and so much CGI you can’t even focus on anything on screen long enough to enjoy it; you can only sit tight and wait for it to be over. whereas you can take a movie like reservoir dogs in which the main scenes of action aren’t even on camera, made with a fraction of the cost, and have a landmark film. heck, i saw this last week on a much smaller screen, in a theatre with less comfortable chairs and much less sophisticated sound, and would still say i enjoyed myself 5 times as much. why? little things like a strong script, original dialogue, and characters that you can’t just throw away (who the hell was that little girl supposed to be? does the frenchman really matter at all? or the train man? where were the twins, or something like the twins, in this movie? do the wachowskis just keep planting seeds just in case they might want to develop them later?).

right. so the real point is that the matrix trilogy could have been incredible if they hadn’t overextended themselves story-wise and just made some creative action movies. i’m not going to say ‘don’t see this’, because you basically have to after seeing the first two. and maybe that was the smartest thing about this movie: we were all committed no matter how it turned out.

if it’s any measure, i would pay to add reservoir dogs to my home collection, whereas i would not even accept a free copy of matrix: revolutions, not wanting it to drag down the integrity of my dvd library. and i own pump up the volume with christian slater, people. think about that one.