The Matrix (1999) Review: The Red Pill Still Works

Is The Matrix worth watching?

Yes. The Matrix is one of the great action films and one of the most influential science fiction movies ever made, and it plays as sharply today as it did in 1999. It welds big philosophical questions to kung fu, gunplay and genuinely new visual effects without ever feeling like homework. If there is a caveat, it is that a stretch of the middle pauses for explanation, and the late-1990s technology gives it a period flavour; neither dents the experience.

What is The Matrix about?

The Matrix follows Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), an office programmer by day and a hacker called Neo by night, who senses that something about the world is wrong. He is contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and then by the legendary Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), a rebel leader who offers him the truth about the nature of reality.

That truth is the film’s premise: the everyday world is a computer simulation, built by machines that keep humanity docile. Morpheus believes Neo may be able to bend the simulation’s rules, and the rebels, hunted inside the program by implacable Agents led by Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith, set out to find out whether he is right.

The film was written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. It is an American production in English, runs 136 minutes and won four Academy Awards, including Best Visual Effects and Best Film Editing.

Action that invented a new grammar

The Wachowskis brought in Hong Kong fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping and had their cast train for months, and it shows. The fights have the speed and wit of classic martial arts cinema, and the logic of the Matrix, where physical rules can be broken, gives every sequence a reason to exist beyond spectacle. The lobby shootout and the rooftop sequence remain textbook set pieces.

The famous “bullet time” effect, in which the camera appears to circle a moment frozen in mid-air, was so widely imitated that it became a cliché within a few years. Seen in context, it is not a gimmick but an idea: a way of showing a character perceiving reality differently. Bill Pope’s green-tinted photography inside the Matrix and cold blue for the real world make the two layers instantly readable.

Big ideas, lightly worn

Part of the film’s staying power is how much it packs in without slowing down. It borrows from Plato’s cave, Descartes, cyberpunk fiction, religious prophecy and Japanese anime, and mixes them into a story about waking up to the systems that shape everyday life. Viewers have read it through many lenses since, including the Wachowskis’ own later identities, and it supports those readings without insisting on any one of them.

The performances are pitched exactly right. Reeves’s reserved, questioning presence makes Neo an audience surrogate rather than a superhero, Fishburne delivers Morpheus’s pronouncements with such gravity that they become iconic, and Moss gives Trinity a cool, physical authority. Weaving’s Agent Smith, with his clipped contempt for humanity, is one of the great screen villains of the era.

The only places it shows its age

The middle section, as Morpheus explains the history of the war between humans and machines, is exposition-heavy, though it is well handled. The chunky phones, CRT monitors and dial-up textures of 1999 now read as retro, though the film’s green-code aesthetic has turned that into a style of its own. And its success led to sequels that expanded the mythology at the expense of clarity, so it is best judged as the complete story it is.

Who should watch The Matrix?

It is for anyone who loves science fiction, action cinema or films with ideas worth arguing about afterwards. Newcomers will find it far less dated than its reputation as a period piece suggests, and returning viewers will spot how much later cinema it shaped. There is plenty of gun violence and some bloody moments, but little gore; teenagers from about 14 up will be fine.

If you want more:

• The Matrix Resurrections, Lana Wachowski’s belated, self-aware return to the saga, which argues with its own legacy.
• TRON: Ares, another story about the uneasy border between a digital world and the physical one.

The verdict

The Matrix is a near-perfect genre film: a thrilling action movie, a clever science fiction story and a stylistic landmark that still feels fresh. Its expository middle is the only soft spot in a film that changed what blockbusters could look like. Watch it, and watch it again.

Rating: 5/5