| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
The Matrix slams you back in your chair, pops open your eyes and leaves your jaw hanging slack in amazement.
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| 90 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The Wachowskis do it so playfully well, keeping The Matrix's potentially confusing plot intelligible, intelligent, and suspenseful, that it doesn't matter.
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| 90 |
LA Weekly
Bill Pope's swooping, noir-inflected cinematography is wonderfully complemented by Owen Paterson's inventive production design, a great soundtrack and the best fight choreography this side of Hong Kong. And even if this isn't "Blade Runner," it is very cool shit.
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| 90 |
Mr. Showbiz
This wildly imaginative thriller is a futuristic head trip you most definitely want to take.
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| 90 |
TNT RoughCut
The Wachowski Brothers have created some of the most unrivaled and imaginative sci-fi in years.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
A wildly cinematic futuristic thriller that is determined to overpower the imagination, The Matrix combines traditional science-fiction premises with spanking new visual technology in a way that almost defies description.
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| 90 |
Film Threat
I'll just say to anyone lamenting the state of American cinema since the 1970s, if you're curious where the next generation of auteurs is coming from, look in the art houses and look in The Matrix.
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| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
With its mix of Lewis Carroll and William Gibson; Japanese anime and Chinese chopsocky; mythological allusions, and machine-made illusion, offers a couple of hours of escapist fun.
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| 88 |
ReelViews
Kinetic, atmospheric, visually stunning, and mind-bending.
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| 80 |
TV Guide
This dazzling pop allegory is steeped in a dark, pulpy sensibility that transcends nostalgic pastiche and stands firmly on its own merits.
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| 80 |
Washington Post
There's a kind of liberating, almost transforming energy in this film; it lights you up and sends you out all giddy with silliness.
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| 80 |
Slate
One of the more lyrical sci-fi action thrillers ever made, in which space and time become love slaves to the directors' witty visual fancies.
|
| 80 |
Dallas Observer
This full-tilt visual and aural bombardment is simply a lot of fun. It never lets up. Nor does it ever want to.
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| 80 |
Washington Post
One big, fat, honking comic book of a sci-fi-martial-arts adventure flick.
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| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Doesn't just raise the bar on sci-fi and action films, it rips that sucker off and sends it spiraling into the sun.
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| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
The plot switches gears every time it threatens to run out of energy, which keeps the show as lively as it is preposterous.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Examiner
Where most effects-laden extravanganzas aspire to be nothing more than a live-action comic book, The Matrix sees things with the venturesome clarity of a graphic novel.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Marc Caro
The writing remains more intelligent than most thrillers, and the action is executed with such panache that even if you don't buy the reality of The Matrix, it's a helluva place to visit.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A visually dazzling cyberadventure, full of kinetic excitement, but it retreats to formula just when it's getting interesting.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
For those who have been waiting for movies to catch up with the graphic possibilities of comic books, wait no longer: The Matrix is among us.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
A dazzlingly original visual adventure.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Rod Dreher
It's like animation come to three-dimensional life, and f/x addicts as well as sci-fi fans will not want to miss a split-second.
|
| 70 |
Variety
An eye-popping but incoherent extravaganza of morphing and superhuman martial arts.
|
| 70 |
Time
Given a budget that encourages their kinesthetic skills, the filmmakers tend to go on a bit, but it's mostly a kind of quick, glancing hipness that's being indulged here.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
The martial arts stunts that are its single strongest selling point.
|
| 70 |
Newsweek
With an arsenal of cool f/x at their disposal, the Wachowskis have come up with a dizzyingly enjoyable junk movie that has just enough on its mind to keep the pleasure from being a guilty one.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
Aerves up so much visual wizardry and thought-provoking ideas that even the inevitable Silver touch -- a finale with more bullets than the opening of "Saving Private Ryan" -- can't destroy the magic.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
It may bore you to death or blow your mind -- and it's long and convoluted enough to do both -- but it holds nothing back.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
Even if a lot of adults have problems following this picture 100%, look for computer-savvy teen-agers to guarantee this sometimes original but too often derivative time-killer a shelf life.
|
| 60 |
Film.com
An exercise in outrageous style over substance.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
The cumulative effect is perversely deflationary: long before it's over, the film has flushed the paranoia from its system.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
The real soullessness here is built into the production, a polished adaptation of Hong Kong-style filmmaking that, with its cast of depressive characters, allows for little Hong Kong-style joy.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
Snazzy visuals, of which she (Moss) is one, carry The Matrix past its klutzy script.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
There's not much humor to keep it all life-size, and by the final stretch it's become bloated, mechanical, and tiresome.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
It's astonishing that so much money, talent, technical expertise and visual imagination can be put in the service of something so stupid.
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