Film Review: Fun, Overly Long “The Matrix Resurrections”

There are a very small number of movies that have had a profound impact upon our culture, jumping immediately to the status of cult classic or, in some instances, genre classic. The Matrix, released in 1999, was just such a hit, a film that turned actor Keanu Reeves into a star, catapulted director siblings The Wachowski’s onto the A-list and had us all marveling at the “bullet-time” super-slow-motion action sequences. The story was engaging, a stunning visual essay on the meaning of reality and free will. 22 years later, it’s still a fun and thoughtful sci-fi thriller. Then there were the sequels, both released in 2003: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. They weren’t anywhere near as good, but the two films, with a total running time of 267 minutes (that’s almost 5 hours), also suffered from being too long and definitely too self-indulgent, as the Wachowski’s have also demonstrated in their other post-Matrix films (notably Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, the atrocious Speed Racer and the Netflix series Sens8).

21 years later, The Matrix Resurrections arrives, with the signature red pill/blue pill decision and dueling realities of the…