I know this is a "spoiler" thread, but I'll say it anyway.
***MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD***
In terms of special effects, and action scenes, this movie kicked some major ass. Best parts:
1) near the end when Neo was flying through the city to save Trinity, and was draging everything behind him in a tornado. It was was funny as Hell, but extremely awesome at the same time.
2) the part where Morpheus slashes the Twins' SUV, and shoots the gas tank. It's just some sort of affliction I have with Samurai swords.
3) and my favourite one of all, the scene where Neo stops all the bullets in the mansion. "Ok, maybe you do have some skills."
I did, however, find that the action did have its faults. After about the 3rd Kung-Fu scene, the rest just began to blend together. How many times can you watch a scene that consists entirely of kick-punch-kick-twirl-pivot-kick, slow-camera-action, kick? I mean, you're Neo. Punch the guy through the brick wall, kick his head to the Moon, and move on.
In terms of story line...meh, it really wasn't the best I've seen. The problem I found was that the storyline relied heavily on action scenes, and when the action stopped, the so did the story.
Take, for example, the rave scene/Neo-Trinity love scene. It was awful. It was like that God-awful love scene in Star Wars II. It was just so long and pointless. I ended up snapping back to reality about 5 minutes into it, wondering when the scene was going to bloody end. We get it! They're partying before the big battle. Neo and Trinity love each other. We don't need 10 minutes to realize that.
Then there was the scene where they meet The Merovingian (the French speaking dude) in the swanky dining room in order to get the Keymaker. I've never seen a guy that could talk, philosiphize, and swear in French as much as this guy could, yet still not make a single point in his entire diatribe. You could have seriously replaced every word coming out of his mouth with the word "blah", and it would have had the exact same effect. In fact, you could have shortened his entire speach down to one sentence; "Sorry dude, I'm not giving you the Keymaker."
But it wasn't quite as bad as the scene with the Architect. They should have called that scene "Story Time with Dr. Snooze". Talk about long winded. At least with the dining room scene, you had something to look at besides countless TV screens all turned to the History Channel.
And yes, I did hear everything that was said, and yes I did understand it, and no, I don't care about the symbolism of it all. As far as I'm concerned, there are only two people that care about symbolism. Smart people who don't really know what they're talking about, and dumb people who try to pretend they're smart.
And finally, despite all the gloriously negative points I gave, I would definitely see this movie again in the theatres (maybe I'll bring a book and a flashlight for the rave scene next time
) The action and special effects more than make up for an otherwise overly convoluted, and unnecessarily long plot line. This one is just too awesome to miss. Can't wait for the third movie.
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edit: Ok. this about the 5th time I've edited this. I keep coming back and realizing I missed something. In retrospect, I should have probably thought about what I was going to say before I posted it. Oh well.
edit: 9th edit. Still going strong.