Before I get to this weeks scene, I want to talk a little about the movie it comes from. The film is The Matrix Reloaded, the first of two sequels to the 1999 sci-fi masterpiece The Matrix. Now I don't know about everyone else out there, but it seems to me that, along with the Star Wars prequels, these two sequels are almost universally hated on. Unlike the prequels however, I believe the hate is almost entirely unjustified.Now admittedly, the Matrix sequel are nowhere near as good as the original, but let's face it: what sequels are? There are a only a meagre handful of second let alone third films that live up to their predecessors, and it seems a little unfair to grade these on a curve. While Reloaded and Revolutions may be not very good in comparison to the original (a movie that is on my personal top ten of all time list, just so you know), on their own they both stand up as exciting, thought-provoking and incredibly well made pieces of sci-fi action.
And that is what this series is ultimately about: action. I actually think that these sequels do a pretty good job of carrying on the deeper ideas and concepts introduced in the first film - ideas of faith and destiny, what have you. But on action alone, the Matrix sequels are amongst the best entries into the genre of the past decade. In fact, as a whole, the Matrix franchise probably contains some of the best action out of any American movie, ever.From the lobby shooting spree in the first film all the way down to the fantastically staged and appropriately epic aerial showdown amidst the lightning, thunder and rain that concludes the saga, this Wachowski brothers (along with fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping) have shown themselves to be masters in the conception and execution of complex action sequences. Today's scene is the freeway chase from Reloaded, a heart-racing scene that in the film goes for at least fifteen minutes and involves multiple villains, multiple vehicles, gunfights, close quarters combat and kung-fu.
Unfortunately, the longest unedited clip I could find on YouTube only goes for three minutes (and cannot be embedded), but it should still give you a good idea of why I love this scene so dearly. These days, actions scenes are more often than not "found in the editing room" - a director sets up as many cameras as possible, films an explosion from all angles, and then stitches it together in post production. This scene on the other hand feels carefully planned out, the camera moving in harmony with the action, which builds to a fantastic climactic fight on the room of a moving semi-truck.In this day and age, few filmmakers have the audacity to come up with a sequence this complex, and even less have the technical skills to pull it off. And in an era where most actions scenes are a blurry mess of jittering cameras and split second editing, this chase is all the more gratifying.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE SCENE! And be sure to leave your own thoughts on the Matrix sequels, below.
