The Matrix: Resurrections: Movie Review

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick,  Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris

Director: Lana Wachowski

The new Matrix movie is messy and meta, but at its heart, it's a love story.

A love story to both Trinity and Neo, but also to nostalgia and the comforts of the original film.

In this latest, Reeves is a blue-pill swallowing Thomas A Anderson, a game developer who made it big with his computer game "The Matrix" but who is struggling with mid-life depression and listlessness as he develops new title Binary.

(These are the first meta riffs contained within the movie - an entire film-long meditation on the Sad Keanu meme, a nod to Keanu as Cyberpunk: 2077 inspiration and promoter, and an overt acknowledgement of the effect the original 1999 film had on pop culture.)

But when he's mysteriously contacted by Jessica Henwick's Bugs, he heads back down the rabbit hole of his own life - and his past.

"Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia" the new Morpheus intones at one point, and certainly The Matrix Resurrections lays heavily on this idea, peppering its screen time with meta nods, jokes about Warner Bros wanting a new film with or without the original creators, and repurposing clips from the original film series in the background as the current action plays out.

Yet, The Matrix Resurrections also lays down heavy lumps of jarring exposition and commentary as it goes on, slowing the proceedings and miring them in thuddingly dull and narratively maddening cul-de-sacs of story.

There is nothing as culture-defining as the bullet time moment in any of The Matrix: Resurrections, but there are plenty of ass-kicking vicarious joy driven action scenes that scream gun porn and sound and fury as the film progresses.

What there is though is a tenderness between Moss and Reeves that's hard to deny - and that delivers a welcome puncture to the increasingly po-faced and convoluted story as it begins to feel like it treads familiar territory as it rages against the Machines.

Both of them sell their story well - though, in truth, Moss feels sidelined for large portions of the film - and Reeves mines his depths of sadness for great dramatic ennui throughout. It's hard to not see John Wick's affectations come through in some of the fight sequences, as earlier versions of Reeves' protagonist dances around in the shadows projected against walls and backdrops.

Of the newcomers, it's perhaps Henwick who makes the biggest impression as Bugs, the leader of the ragtag resistance who believes in Neo and who leads a group of worshippers well-versed in the Neo and Trinity lore. From an ease of screen presence to a scrappy quality, there's something about Henwick 

that's undeniable in this movie.

While there is sentiment, self-awareness, and self-deprecation in the first half of the film, some scenes go a bit too far and won't age well with time, setting up superficialities which come to the fore in the final wash. And the second half of the film feels like a retread of Neo and Trinity's previous action in prior films.

But there are moments that stand aloft in Lana Wachowski's computer-simulated nostalgia blanket. 

Fight scenes are closely shot and occasionally blur into one but they deliver the punch you'd want, even if they lack the clarity of choreography to stand out. But to old school fans of The Matrix, they represent a mainline fix and thrill, even if newer audiences may end up feeling aloof from the fan service that unfolds.

Ultimately, The Matrix: Resurrections will scratch some itches that have been left untouched for 20 years, but will irritate others that are still not satiated by dumps of exposition over thematic development.

But as a love letter to the past, and a love story for Neo and Trinity, it's peerless in its execution.