by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

In retrospect, the massive breakout success of the first Matrix flick - the bullet in the brainpan of the old dog Star Wars - makes perfect sense. Firstly, the film's hacker-as-hero shtick tapped into the geek chic of the dot-com days, before the bubble burst and sidewalks became littered with chubby, goateed types clutching "will program for food" placards. More importantly, though, it wasn't so much an astoundingly original concept as a masterful mix 'n' mash.

The Wachowski Brothers, the (chubby, goateed) duo behind The Matrix, capitalized on their presumably lonely and sexless adolescence by excising the coolest bits of their favourite comics, movies and sci-fi novels. They pinched the collapsing layers of reality from writer Philip K. Dick and the plug-in brain programming from William Gibson. They boosted the man-machine interface from Tron and the robo-genocide from Terminator. They copped the frosty stylishness and frenzied techno-detailing of Euro-comix by Moebius and Bilal, the bullet ballet of John Woo and the gracefully surreal wire-fighting of modern kung fu flicks, going so far as to enlist the master, Yuen Wo-Ping, to choreograph. Finally, they nailed the slow-mo combat tableaux common to Japanese anime and samurai films, bumping it up a notch with the technical novelty of "bullet time."

The success of The Matrix demanded a round two (and three, due out lickety-split on November 7), as well as an expansion of the film's universe via the Animatrix cartoons - created by some of Japan's finest animators, out on DVD in June. But as their wellspring of pre-existing ideas had been wrung dry, for The Matrix Reloaded they've simply gone bigger. A whole lot bigger. Not a bad thing when one feasts one's peepers on sequences like the schoolyard fight, wherein Neo (Keanu Reeves) battles dozens of clones of his nemesis Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving, who does a damn good American accent… for an elf), or the utterly amazing highway battle. The latter is a full quarter-hour of white-knuckle insanity, apparently requiring more effects and wire work than the entire first film. As far as retina-scalding hyper-action goes - and that, in the end, is what people want the most from this series - The Matrix Reloaded delivers above and beyond the call.

There is one new spin - turns out the Matrix isn't populated exclusively by the cyber-selves of humanity and the system's Gestapo-esque "agents." There are also rogue programs, some good, some bad, who manifest as some of the most interesting characters. The dreadlocked, phase-shifting silver twins will raise an eyebrow and the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) delivers the film's brief laugh quotient in explaining that cussing in French is like "wiping one's arse with silk."

Unfortunately, substantial time is devoted to the corny utterings of pseudo-profundities, this sort of Philosophy for Dummies intended to elevate The Matrix above the trashy pop-culture realm it currently dominates. There's a whole lotta chin-stroking goin' on as characters pontificate on the conflict between fate and free will, coincidence and providence. The idea of choice is given the dimestore Zen treatment, which prompted this writer to reflect that, while it is my fate to own the video of The Matrix Reloaded one day, it will be by my own free choice that I'm gonna fast-forward through all that Rama-Rum-Raisin shit.

The Matrix Reloaded is now playing

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