#5 — The Matrix
This is part of an illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies, a sort of Show & Tell for people who like to watch things blow up. Last week I talked about my favorite action car fantasy, Mad Max: Fury Road.
An underachiever seeking to alter his future embarks on journey through a telephone booth, guided by a wise mentor in a trench coat and sunglasses. He has to complete a book report on the war against the machines, but he’s been doing nothing but playing System Shock in his room. This was the third action movie of Keanu’s career, but its roots reach back to Bill & Ted more than anything else he’s done. I think that’s part of what makes this such a lasting classic. It’s a story of self-discovery and unity. Even people who enjoy face-punching are into that stuff, right? It’s also a paradigm-shifting, cultural touchstone that took me years to fully appreciate.
I didn’t see it in a theater. I only remember people talking about the lobby shootout and imagining it in my kid brain, which my parents had placed on a maximum security lockdown. I guess they didn’t want me watching movies with lots of guns. How’d that turn out? When I finally saw it on a 19 inch CRT in my friends basement, it didn’t quite live up to my fevered dreams. But the action scenes were great, and I wanted Carrie Anne Moss to roundhouse kick me into the next life for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. I knew that much.
Fast forward about 10 years — to a larger tv, a blu ray release, an ounce of new perspective, and an increased cinematic vocabulary. I felt like I was seeing it for the first time, and it blew my mind. Just an earth shattering awakening to one of the greatest movies ever made — sort of like discovering your entire perception of reality is a simulation controlled by machines manipulating you into passively watching movies instead of considering that any larger understanding of the world or one’s own experiences could be better understood as explained through art and entertainment. Whoa.
Now I dance at Club Zion. I don’t wear constricting black suits and ties, I put on comfortable, stretchy pants able to contort themselves to any physical expression of joy I desire, and I boogie to the Propellerheads. I eat pizza at all times of the day, I mix and match genres, and I rank up all my skill trees before beating the final boss. I do my homework remotely, through a 5G network directing all my straight A’s to a computer chip designed by Jonathan Ive.
Action movies didn’t know you could do this before, they were all wearing the clothes their parents picked out for them. Cyberpunk, anime, bullet time, kung fu, fantasy, LOVE. Lana and Lilly Wachowski were truly visionary, something the front cover usual lies about. The cast had to adopt the same ‘no limits’ mentality as their characters, with four actors over 30 (Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving were both nearly 40) undertaking months of martial arts training. This is still unprecedented, given the context. Keanu was the only leading cast member with anything remotely resembling an action background, and those roles were considered outliers for a perceived goofball.
I guess there’s an instinct to immediately compare the end result to your favorite Donny Yen movie and laugh at their foot-speed or whatever, but I think they mostly look great doing things that most actors would never bother committing to. The way everything is shot felt revelatory when paired with Yuen Woo-ping’s choreography.
The visual language on display is amazing. Where someone like Quentin Tarantino might recreate the splattery violence of samurai films with the care of a surgeon, the Wachowski’s actually go further, seamlessly merging genres and techniques that you’d never anticipate. The opening scene presents a shadowed city-scape filled with unsolved mysteries and haunted high-rise buildings. The costuming and set design recall old noir detective stories, and Agent Smith speaks like he’s on an episode of Dragnet.
The cops are about to arrest a mystery woman that looks like if Winona Ryder were a terminator, and that’s when the whole ballgame changes. She breaks his arm and does this praying mantis pose in the air, and then the camera rotates around her body while the moment freezes in time. Then she’s running on walls and cops are chasing her across rooftops. It’s like a perfect, unlikely marriage of the opening from Vertigo and Iron Monkey. I didn’t know this was allowed.
This is one of my favorite kind of setups, where you get dropped into a world with specific rules, but you only start with clues as to what they are. Is she a vampire? Is she gonna fight Batman? What number do you have to dial to disappear like that? The answers to these questions can be deflating in less capable hands, but the Wachowski’s deliver the rare story that actually matches, if not exceeds, its trendsetting action scenes.
I think the aesthetic of The Matrix has aged beautifully, leather coats and all. I’ve never seen gothic-noir visuals (the shot of Neo standing under a rain-soaked bridge is immaculate) merged with sci-fi and Hong Kong action. Not like this. The movie just does whatever it wants, whatever is cool or interesting, and makes it work.
The dojo training sequence is memorable for sure, but I think the crown jewel has to be the Morpheus rescue, which forms an action triptych of lobby shootout, rooftop bullet dodging, and helicopter hijacking. It’s just iconic hero moment after moment, elevated by real dramatic tension.
The aforementioned lobby shootout was possibly the catalyst for my renewed adoration of this movie. It’s a perfect symphony of environmental destruction, sound design, and choreography. There’s a horizontal slow motion tracking shot of Keanu duel wielding MP5’s while chunks of granite and debris flood the foreground and bounce off the screen. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, mixing the operatic chaos of a John Woo gunfight with the technical sheen of a James Cameron film.
The recurring use of phones is a fun storytelling device for connecting worlds and creating emergency exits. Agent Smith destroying the only way out pays off a massive buildup to facing your fears. Neo’s progression is so satisfying in this regard. First he doesn’t trust the voice on the other line, then he reluctantly listens, but fails to follow instructions. At the police station he now asks for his phone call, but can’t have it. By the end, he’s making the calls and reaching out to others looking for that same level of self-actualization. He’s liberated himself and become a beacon for others.
That might be the best thing about The Matrix, in hindsight. That this audacious action blockbuster isn’t about destroying an enemy, but about overcoming fear itself. It feels reductive to talk about the Matrix purely as an action movie in this regard, but I think it’s awesome that someones love for everything from John Woo and kung fu to Alice in Wonderland and Snow White could have its wires crossed with themes of self empowerment and acceptance. In this universe, a kiss is as powerful as a bullet.
