Code turkey
Neo is sucked back into the digital illusion of the Matrix... but slapdash sequel is riddled with bugs
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS (15) ★★III REVIEWS BY DAMON SMITH
WHEN Lana and Lilly Wachowski hardwired cinema audiences into The Matrix in 1999, the rush of blood to the head from “bullet time” was intoxicating.
Their hyperkinetic style of filmmaking was pillaged relentlessly by pop culture, but the franchise suffered cardiac arrest with the bamboozling sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.
The Matrix Resurrections reunites principal cast members Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss for a nonsensical and nostalgic exercise in chest-puffing self-aggrandisement.
Picking up 20 years after The Matrix Revolutions, Thomas Anderson (Reeves) is now the designer of The Matrix video game trilogy.
Based in San Francisco at the company he co-owns with Smith (Jonathan Groff ), Thomas makes regular visits to a therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) after a failed suicide bid and blithely swallows prescribed blue pills to calm the voices in his head.
When a renegade operative called Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and a new iteration of Morpheus (Yahya AbdulMateen II) persuade Thomas to pop a red pill, he takes another tumble down the rabbit hole with a motorcycle enthusiast called Tiffany (Moss).
The Matrix Resurrections is too meta to matter beyond the curiosity value of Reeves and Moss, both in their fabulous 50s.
Regrettably, they share insufficient screen time to rekindle screen chemistry while Abdul-Mateen II is a lacklustre substitute for
Laurence Fishburne’s theatricality.
Directed solely by Lana Wachowski, this instalment in the franchise has a dongle wedged so far up its USB port that it fails to realise the only people laughing at the injokes are on screen.
Action sequences recycle key motifs from the earlier films, but a night-time car chase fails its MOT.
At the end of The Matrix Revolutions, the Oracle was asked if they would ever see Neo again.
“I suspect so, some day,” intoned the sage.
For once, I wish she was wrong.
In cinemas now