Quotes of the Day

For a couple of hours this Wednesday, the world will be one. The Matrix Revolutions, the climax of Andy and Larry Wachowski's science-fiction trilogy launched in 1999, will premiere in major cities around the globe at precisely the same moment. The clocks will read 6 a.m. in Los Angeles, 9 a.m. in New York, 2 p.m. in London, 3 p.m. in Paris and 11 p.m. in Tokyo, but moviegoers everywhere can feel a kinship with their fellow Matricians — as if they were linked, in sacred harmony, to a giant computer brain being fed the same data. But paying for it. And with no downloading. It's like Napster in reverse.

Though the mission of the reborn hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) in M3 is to unite the real and virtual worlds in pacific brotherhood, the simultaneous worldwide openings have less to do with bringing international audiences together than with Hollywood's fear of movie piracy. Even so, it's a canny promotion. But will anyone show up with the sense of avid expectation that greeted The Matrix Reloaded, second in the series, last May?

The 1999 original was a genuine Neo classic. It trumped its nifty martial artistry and digital effects with a theme of self-discovery in the great heroic tradition. (Also stuff about theology and theoretical mathematics, but you didn't need a graduate degree to get juiced by the experience.) So what did the brothers do for an encore? They spread the sequel over two feature-length films and, truth to tell, got a little gassy in their storytelling.

The first film — dense and tidy, with Neo and a small crew of rebels battling Mr. Smith (Hugo Weaving) and his team of virtual narcs — gave way to a sprawl of characters and settings. The rebel fortress of Zion was a drab lair whose denizens engaged in way too much Jedi Council-style nattering. Then, as if producer Joel Silver had pleaded, "Could you please have somebody hit somebody?", Reloaded 180'd into an action movie, with the most elaborate car chase ever shot, but without the first film's zip or resonance. But, as Silver said of M2, it was "only half a movie." Revolutions is the other half, and if it doesn't quite touch the original for sheer cinematic wow, it's a big improvement over M2. It is the satisfying climax the last film promised.

Like Reloaded, Revolutions begins with no flashbacks, no print crawl summarizing the story thus far. The filmmakers assume the viewer has committed the characters, plot points and metaphysics to memory — and, for extra credit, seen the dvd Animatrix, which fleshes out some of the subplots. Neo, recall, is now unplugged, lost in a nightmare realm between the virtual reality of the Matrix and the "real" world of machines, and is pursued by Smith, who's gone freelance and become a fatal computer virus. Neo's friends Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) can't locate him, so they must plan the defense of Zion with the help only of the fractious rebel commandos. Their immediate obstacle: the decadent, dangerous Merovingian (Lambert Wilson). Their possible key to Neo's location: the Oracle (Mary Alice), who, we learned in M2, is a computer program herself and not always trustworthy.

The movie takes a while to get up to warp speed; the Zion debates drone on, the acting and much of the dialogue is stilted, perfunctory, TV-level. But the Wachowskis know to start kicking ass early; Morpheus and Trinity have a cool fight with the Merovingian's goons, who hang from the ceiling like bats (bats with really big guns). The brothers also know that any trilogy needs a climactic battle scene. So the Zion soldiers get outfitted in gigantic robot armor — clinking, clanking, clattering collections of collagenous junk — against a swarm of the Matrix's sentinels. Remember those metal octopests, those enemy anemones that chased the good guys in M1 and M2? They're back in megaforce, thousands of them, forming a snake shape that rears and strikes at Zion.

Somehow, though, you knew that the fate of the universe would hang on the outcome of a kung fu fight between Neo and Smith. Here it comes, at the end, in a slow, heavy rain, on city streets and above them. The trilogy ascends, soars with the two combatants, and ends, not with a whimper but with a blast of light. The audiences watching this final fight may not feel at one with the movie universe, but they should be grateful that the fabulous original film has found a potent and honorable way to sign off.

• RICHARD CORLISS
• The Matrix Revolutions signs off in style