The Matrix Resurrections starts strong, has good story continuation from the end of the last film, but suffers from a saggy final act. For awhile, I was thinking the film was going to be quite strong until it fell into the some of the bad habits of the second two movies. Still better than The Matrix Revolutions though.

The film is hard to synopsize without spoilers so I won’t even bother. It’s a Matrix film… you can fill in the blanks with machines, kung-fu, and great big ideas.

I will say that the opening act is a metatextual discussion of rebooting The Matrix as well as analyzing the original film’s own iconic narrative. It is the strongest part of the film conceptually – borrowing from and adding to the themes of The Matrix’s own first act. I was fascinated by where it was going, its take on reality and what we know is real, and its own joking understanding of why this movie is being made.

The second act is where we get to understand how Lana Wachowski and crew expanded and extended the universe after the end of Revolutions. And I liked most of the answers though it does leave some things more cryptic than I would have liked. They borrow from, but also build on, iconic imagery and ideas in a way that makes sense.

But the final act… it just trades a bit too much on the importance of the love between Neo and Trinity. Sadly that was never the strength of the original trilogy and holds true here (as much as I like Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as actors and characters). Plus, and more importantly, the planning/setup for the final act has the same hand-waving logic of The Matrix Reloaded. When it finally comes, the action gets muddled and lacks energy and cohesive forward momentum. When it should be propulsive, it just kind of sags. It doesn’t kill the movie but it certainly hurts it.

Plus the film has the bad habit of throwing in action scenes for the sake of filling time and keeping us attention deficit kids entertained. This is a mistake the second two films made too. Not enough call for the action, not enough impact or relevance. Just action for action’s sake because some Hollywood suit thought we’d get bored.

It was nice to see Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss back in action but it was noticeable that Lawrence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving did not return. There are other actors playing versions of them in this flick with decent explanations (I guess) why. It’s not like they do a bad job so much as remind us that maybe the original actors didn’t want to return (or maybe there were other reasons).

Overall, this is a good, but flawed, attempt at resurrecting (ahem) the Matrix as a franchise. I think 2/3rds of the flick are pretty strong and are only betrayed by a flimsy, low-stakes final third with mediocre action scenes. That said, I’m intrigued at what the film seems to be setting up so I’d welcome another.

Score: 80