Matrix 3 hits theaters hot - Saga is completed by stunning effects and themes of love, death

With the third installment in the Matrix trilogy, the Wachowski brothers must live up to the technical wizardry of the first two while making sense of the issues left unresolved at the end of Matrix Reloaded. The plot of Matrix Revolutions picks up where Reloaded left off, with Neo lying in a coma, his mind stranded in a subway station between the Matrix and the real world. He has already shown that his powers transcend the virtual reality of the Matrix; at the end of Reloaded, he has short-circuited the sentinels bearing down on Morpheus' crew in the real world.

Since this subway station is part of a smuggling line operated by the Merovingian, Trinity and Morpheus set out to confront the ultra suave, French-speaking program and free Neo. Once free, Neo visits the Oracle, who decides this time to help the humans. She tells him that the fate of Zion will boil down to a battle between him and Agent Smith, the agent-turned-virus running amok through the Matrix. Trinity and Neo set out for the machine city to strike a deal with the machine consciousness, while Morpheus, Link and Niobe pilot the remaining ship back to Zion to help defend against the sentinel attack.

Revolutions frames the questions about control and choice raised in Reloaded so that they all make sense. The final fight between Agent Smith and Neo is not only visually stunning, but also meaningful. "What makes you get up?" snarls the more powerful Agent Smith. Neo's answer shows us that the One's self-doubts in Reloaded have melted away in the quiet, confidence of knowledge: "Because I choose to," he replies.

All the critics running around calling this a noisy video game mixed with incomprehensible philosophy lessons are missing the point: the Wachowski brothers have created a brilliant theme of birth, life and death. The original was the story's coming into the world: it was unbelievably cool without taxing our gray matter with too many heavy questions. If the original was the birth, then Reloaded was about the challenges of making your way through the complex choices that life forces us to make. Revolutions brings the saga full-circle by offering up themes of death that are implied by Neo's embracing love as the ultimate redeeming factor in the world.

Visually, the film is so hot that it almost set the celluloid on fire. Revolutions is organized around three main action sequences, that literally revolutionize special effects. Trinity and Morpheus crashing the Merovingian's club and breaking through his security system makes for a superb fight sequence; the bouncers take to the ceiling, while the gravity-bound rebels kick major butt with guns and kung-fu.

Then, there's Neo's battle with Smith. The two men facing off in the bleak, rain- drenched streets of the Matrix creates an almost lyrical effect, while the shock waves set off by their battle are monumental.

But the best sequence is Zion's fight against the machines, spectacle to be admired by any war movie. When the sentinels crack the hull and begin pouring in Zion, humans fight them off in huge robots that obey the movements of their bodies. It's a lot like a real life scene from Transformers, but there's also intelligent stuff going on: strategies, defense plans, cost benefit analyses.

Females certainly come off stronger in this movie; Trinity rescues Neo, Zee (Nona Gaye) runs around saving Zion, while Niobe (played to fiery perfection by Jada Pinkett-Smith) steals the show, piloting a ship to Zion with a few hundred sentinels on her trail. Her only job in Reloaded is to cover Morpheus' prophetic butt; here, it's a sheer pleasure seeing her so competently in charge, with Morpheus taking orders. "You're a helluva pilot," Morpheus tells her. Not to mention a helluva woman.

The final judgement; Revolutions shows that the series really works, but only if the audience is willing to tax it's brains. This stuff isn't meant to come easy, but then, we'd be disappointed if it did. It's a triumph, but only if you're open to the kind of the story the brothers want to tell. One piece of advice from the original Matrix will serve you well: as Morpheus tells Neo, "Free your mind."