pc_dean

Here is wisdom: Everything that has a beginning has an end. A long, plodding, painfully drawn-out end. Here is more wisdom: Some things are better left to the imagination. There is no spoon.

The Matrix trilogy limps to an less-than-satisfying conclusion in The Matrix Revolutions, which makes a lot of the same mistakes that made Reloaded such a disappointment. How did this happen? The first movie was so cool, so exhilarating. It nodded politely to all its blended sources, before pouring them all together and creating its own intriguing story, with layers of reality stacked helter-skelter. It created a sensation, defined moviemaking for a generation, and inspired musings by fans ranging from obscure ramblings on websites (um, hi there) to doctoral theses. Forget The Phantom Menace - The Matrix was the real successor to Star Wars. And that, I think, is the problem. The Matrix series has become so intent on itself as post-modern myth that it forgets to be fun. Both sequels ratcheted up the mumbo-jumbo while discarding the endearingly loopy pseudo-religiosity that gave the first movie its charm. They increase complexity and reduce joy. There is no reason whatsoever why the sequels should turn out to be more talky than the first one, which had to set up the whole scenario in the first place, but that's exactly what happened.

I won't bother too much with plot summary, especially since it's so convoluted and strange, expanding on the revelations in Reloaded about the nature and history of the Matrix. Anyway, the Bad Guys are still on their way to trash Zion, and Agent Smith is still replicating like a crazed Xerox machine in a bid to take over the Matrix.

Revolutions, like Reloaded, errs in setting comparatively little action inside the Matrix itself. The Matrix, and the heroes' ability to distort its reality to their advantage, was the element that made the original stand out, and gave it the wow factor that made it a modern classic. It's the series' best card, but they seem reluctant to play it. It was far more dramatically effective to dream of Zion than to see it, and that was before we knew that it looked like some kind of industrial-park hippie commune. There is too much of Zion in Revolutions, too much of its unwashed squalor, its strange caveman fetish, and the stuffy school board that runs it (including Cornel West, whose acting skills suggest he should stick to extorting money from Harvard, or Princeton, or whatever school he's milking now).

But Reloaded gave us a nifty car-chase set piece to partially redeem itself for being so dull and earnest. Revolutions instead gives us a slug-match at the rusty gates of Zion between invading robo-squids and the goofily impractical weaponry of Zion's defense forces. I need to talk about these for a sec - they have these giant robot frames with machine guns in each hand, but with no targeting system or any kind of shielding for the operator. Who designed these things? Undertakers? The fight scene itself is big and loud, and not without visual dazzle, but it's nothing you haven't already seen, and better. The in- Matrix theatrics are limited to a floor-to-ceiling shootout in the basement of a nightclub, and the final fistfight showdown between Neo and Agent Smith. They are amazing scenes of technical artistry, but then they're over.

The Matrix series provided the perfect vehicle for Keanu Reeves, who is, to put it kindly, not a deep actor. Reeves has made the most of his spacey quality, and turns his flatness into an impressive sort of Zen charisma. There's really no other actor who could have pulled it off as well. And though she is more talented, he and Carrie-Anne Moss do have a certain quiet chemistry together. The real disappointment in Revolutions is Laurence Fishburne. He was perfectly cast as the inscrutable master, communicating wisdom and self- possession, with just the right leavening of humor. In Reloaded, he had that awful scene where he bellowed that weird speech on the rock in Zion -

Morpheus should never have to raise his voice - but his freeway sword battle was thrilling. By Revolutions Fishburne looks pudgy and spent, and doesn't get any good scenes. It's as if Morpheus is so far past his prime that they only keep him around out of pity.

There's still Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Weaving's unmistakable stilted line deliveries have become part of film lore, perfectly capturing the sense that something about the world was slightly. . .off, and one of the subtle signs that the machines' understanding of humanity was incomplete. In Revolutions Smith is working solo, and becoming a threat to human and machine alike. He has an entourage of clones, though the effect is more comic than chilling.

Revolutions also sees the return of the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) and his chilly consort (Monica Bellucci). I never understood these characters' purpose, and still don't. Their presence in the second movie seemed like an unnecessary detour, but one imagined they were being introduced because they would become significant by series' end. They don't - they actually get less screen time in the final chapter than the second. This is probably just as well, since whenever they were on screen in Reloaded, it stopped the movie dead.

The ending is obtuse, and leaves you going, `Well, NOW what?' If the Wachowskis hadn't announced that the trilogy was ended, I would think they were leaving themselves open for a fourth movie (`The Matrix Obfuscations', perhaps).

This review ended up being little more than a litany of complaint. But mulling over the movie, one thing was clear: I wish they had just left the first movie alone. A bad sequel is a kind of betrayal, as any fan of `Robocop' or `The Hidden' will tell you. Oh, well, while I'm at it, here's a prediction off the top of my head: the next Star Wars movie, when it finally comes out, is gonna suck too. You're welcome.

Evidently, Robert Rodriguez has decided that he wants to be Sergio Leone when he grows up. And if his latest movie is any guide, he's well on his way. Not that this is a bad thing. Leone is most famous for his `Spaghetti Westerns', which shook up the creaky black-vs-white-hat conventions of the Western form that became entrenched during the 1950s, and made an icon out of a former gas station attendant named Clint Eastwood. There's a lot of Leone in `Once Upon a Time in Mexico', Rodriguez's latest entry in his signature `Mariachi' series, following El `Mariachi' and `Desperado'. The new movie, whose title is an homage to Leone's `Once Upon a Time in the West', is an epic opera of blood, dust, and vengeance that would have made the master smile.

Mexico follows series hero El Mariachi (amusingly called `El' for short) as he is dragged from the shadows of obscure legend and into the sneaky plotting of a gleefully amoral CIA operative (Johnny Depp, every inch the charming sociopath). The plot concerns an attempt by a corrupt general in the employ of a vicious cartel boss (Willem Dafoe) to assassinate Mexico's president and seize power in a coup. Depp wants to prevent the general's rise to power (but not, he makes clear, the murder of the president), and to that end enlists/ dragoons Banderas, who has a serious grudge against General Marquez.

Rodriguez aims for epic sweep, and the story becomes quite dense and twisty, involving a great many characters, including Eva Mendes as a cagey federalista, and Ruben Blades as a retired FBI agent who has lost too many friends and seen too many enemies escape. The grand scheme of the plot both helps and hurts the movie; it's involved and interesting, but contributes to the movie's being somewhat overlong and losing its focus by the end. `Mexico' is less comedic than `Desperado' (though it has some charming jokes and references to the earlier movies - check out the Chihuahua's name tag!), and touches more directly on serious issues affecting contemporary Mexico, including corruption in the military, the narco-tyranny of the cartels, and the fragility of democratic institutions in a country wracked by conflict. Rodriguez has said he did not intend `Mexico' as a political statement, but the movie is heavily and often poignantly flavored with Mexican patriotism.

Rodriguez knows how to handle a cast, and this one, which includes faces who have worked with him many times before, does not disappoint. Whatever else he may do, Antonio Banderas will probably always be remembered for the character he creates in these movies. His Mariachi is a hero of wounded power, whose brooding silences, quiet voice, and soulful eyes remind us that revenge, the most common action-movie motivation around, is inexplicably linked with horrific loss. Banderas' characterization is so good, that one quickly forgave him for stealing the role from Carlos Gallardo, who likably originated it in `El Mariachi' (Gallardo has, happily, not been cast aside; he had a cameo in `Desperado', and has shared producer credit on the entire series).

No one, however, is having nearly as much fun in this movie as Johnny Depp, whose Agent Sands is a happy-go-lucky nihilist who carries off any scene that isn't nailed down. He is a remorseless murderer, but a charming one, and so by the perverse moral logic of movies, sympathetic; he also provides the bulk of the comic relief. His presence in the movie is not nearly as extensive as you might think, given his prominent billing (the same is true of Salma Hayek, who is billed second, but whose role is essentially a glorified cameo).

Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo, frequent Rodriguez collaborators, appear as vivid lowlifes (though not the same vivid lowlifes they played in `Desperado'; those were deceased by the closing credits). Blades is excellent as the reluctant FBI agent, a tired man of integrity who discovers that years of retirement cannot dim his anger at the ones who got away. Dafoe is appropriately sinister, though his performance makes one keenly aware just how cliched the Latin American drug kingpin villain has become. Mickey Rourke serves as Dafoe's right-hand man, and seems to be channeling the late, great Johnny Cash in what I have to confess is the only Mickey Rourke performance I have ever truly enjoyed. The main problem in the cast is not bad performance, just that the huge scope Rodriguez brings to the movie involves too many people, and limits the amount of time each has to establish themselves. Enrique Iglesias and Marco Leonardi, in particular, create less memorable characters as Banderas' backup men than did Gallardo and Albert Michel Jr. in `Desperado' (who didn't even have any lines.)

When, in true Western style, Banderas inevitably straps on his six-million- shooters to do battle with the Bad Guys, Rodriguez also delivers thundering, amped-up action sequences, which evoke the Hong Kong style without merely imitating it. Rodriguez's gun battle set pieces are ballistic expressions of gruesome joy, and he gives us a number of them, including a frenetic running battle and motorcycle chase (appropriately set to `Pistolero' by Juno Reactor, the hardest-working electronica band in movies), leading up to a ferocious street battle during the coup attempt on Dia de Los Muertos. Fans of Leone will notice many of his trademark close-ups of squinting eyes and poetic, stylish showdowns. Rodriguez also tweaks playfully with the visual vocabulary of Westerns; instead of horses materializing on the horizon or the noon train steaming in the distance as harbingers of impending danger, we get battered pickup trucks driving in clouds of dust, laden down with grim, unshaven men with sunglasses and automatic weapons. The Banditos Cometh. `Once Upon a Time in Mexico' is not quite as good as its predecessors, but it still provides a blazing good time for Western fans and gun fetishists alike. Count me in.