That was the problem I had with The Matrix Reloaded. I thought, and still think, that it was a decent action picture with some extraordinary fight scenes. It was further remarkable for the fact that it could be enjoyed on an intellectual level, as well as providing more visceral thrills. Come for the freeway chase scene and some serious kung fu, stay for the Cartesian metaphysics and dissection of the idea of free will. The problem was that much of it was set within the Matrix, and as such, it was difficult to believe at any time that Neo was in any kind of danger whatsoever. The dude was Superman.

We left off, in Reloaded, with the idea that Neo's very existence as the One was not a miracle, but was instead a stopgap measure, deliberately programmed to deal with the "human factor" that would permit occasional escapees from the Matrix; with Agent Smith's discovery of a way to translate himself into the real world via human surrogates; and that the "real world," the grim metal labyrinth of Zion, was just as much of a simulation as the Matrix itself. Also: explosions.

Revolutions is the war movie of the trilogy, set almost entirely in the "real world." As Neo lies unconscious, caught between worlds, and the unfortunate human escapee who Smith infected is planted like a bomb right next to him, the last human city of Zion has only hours left to live. Morpheus and Trinity fight to rescue Neo, while the survivors of Zion try desperately to fight off the invasion of the machines.

On the one hand, when I say it's a war movie, it's a pretty damned good war movie. Giant chaingun-wielding mechs versus swarming tentacular robot monsters, with human bazooka teams scrambling to deal with the machines' enormous city-wall-breaching drill and things exploding every fifteen seconds or so, is a recipe for a good time at the movies any day of the week. There's some decent early kung fu courtesy of Seraph (Collin Chou), good gun fu at the hands of Morpheus and Trinity, and the long-awaited fight scene, shown in the trailer, of Neo and Smith having their climactic showdown might as well be running with a big flashing neon subtitle reading, "DEAR HOLLYWOOD, LET US DIRECT A SUPERMAN MOVIE. LOVE AND KISSES, LARRY AND ANDY."

On the other, Revolutions is a bizarre way to end the trilogy.

Maybe I'm missing some kind of wildly important point here. I'm not one of the people who got irritated by the layers upon layers of symbolism in Reloaded, perhaps stemming from the fact that I am one of the few people who know what the hell a Merovingian is. The Wachowskis have a reputation as being smart and deliberate filmmakers, and from what I see, that reputation is largely deserved; they are not the kinds of B-list talent who would write a script that's all like "blah blah blah TAOISM blah blah blah FREE WILL blah blah blabbity blah EMPIRICISM" and then expect everyone to ooh and ah about how damn clever they are. They know what they're doing, kids.

Revolutions has none of that. Many of the best action sequences involve the actors sitting down, manning turrets or mechs or pilot seats, as opposed to dishing out aesthetically satisfying hurt on a personal level. It has its own strengths, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that they aren't the strengths you'd expect to see in a Matrix movie. It's more like Saving Private Neo, with Zion standing in for the beach at Normandy.

Revolutions also does almost nothing with what I thought of as the single most interesting thing about Reloaded, the seeming revelation that the real world may just be another layer of the Matrix, as indicated by Neo being able to generate an electromagnetic pulse all by himself. Instead of exploring that issue, the idea that Zion and all its people may simply be another virtual-reality simulation, Revolutions opts instead for a considerably less interesting and satisfying conclusion. The Wachowskis looked for all the world like they were going to make Descartes: The Action Movie, where Zion and the machine world were shooting at each other across Hegel's existential gap. (I minored in philosophy. I rarely get to use it.) They didn't. Without any spoilers, I walked out of Revolutions feeling vaguely like someone had written "CHRIST METAPHOR" on a sledgehammer and beaten me with it for two hours, perhaps occasionally allowing me to block with a hardcover copy of the Tao te Ching.