A black-leather clad woman swan dives out of a helicopter and dives into a burning building. "I'm in," she wires back to some unknown correspondent. After a fierce gunfight, she falls out a window, her opponent in hot pursuit. As the two of them fall towards the ground, the camera follows the woman as she continues blazing her guns away.

If all of THE MATRIX RELOADED were as cool as this opening scene, it would be one heck of an action flick. However, this is merely a dream of Neo (Keanu Reeves), the unlikely Messianic figure who is destined to save what's left of humanity from the Machines and Agents who control The Matrix, and this yawnfest has another two and a half hours to go.

Swell. We're living in the hellish virtual reality that is America during Bush version 2.0, being pursued by self-replicating Agents who all look like John Ashcroft, and they send Ted Logan to save us. I'll take the blue pill now, I think. THE MATRIX RELOADED takes place a mere six months after the first film, but the idea of consensus reality being just rogue software seems more and more plausible every day, because only a truly demented geek programmer could come up with the world in which we're living.

The Matrix was something special; a reasonably original sci-fi premise, leavened with just enough philosophy to elevate it above popcorn fluff but not take itself too seriously, combined with some truly innovative kung-fu effects. The net result was something new and fresh that we'd never seen before. Because the first film made so much money, its creators, Andy and Larry Wachowski, were immediately contracted to try to catch this lightning in a bottle not twice but three times. The honchos at Warner Bros. have obviously forgotten the laws of physics, because the very things that made the original film so cool have since been copied, paid tribute to, and even parodied in films as diverse as Scary Movie and Shrek. As a result, THE MATRIX RELOADED plays like a weary, pretentious retread of the original, making the fatal mistake of taking itself too seriously.

The Matrix offered at least moderate character development; its sequel doesn't even offer that. In the original film, Keanu Reeves, whose range spans the gamut from stoned to clueless, was well-cast as the perpetually baffled Thomas Anderson, who was just beginning to understand his own potential in the world around him. But now that Neo is essentially Jesus, even the black robes that make him look like the vicar of a small English village can't give him the gravitas a character like this requires. It's time to find a better actor to play this role.

Meanwhile, the mystically badass Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) seems to have been demoted to something akin to starship captain, and when he addresses the world's largest mosh pit, reminding the denizens of Zion that after centuries of war, they're still here, he comes across like a pretentious gasbag in a cave -- a sci-fi Osama Bin Laden who really wants to be a rock 'n' roll star like Bono.

Meanwhile, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), she of the kickass dream sequence that turns out to be just a tease, has little to do but make goo-goo eyes at Neo. Her biological clock must be ticking loudly, because she seems to be in a terrible hurry to start being the Mother of the New Race it's obvious she's going to be, trading in her cool kung-fu moves for romance. The consummation of her relationship with Neo takes place against the backdrop of a Zion party that seems to have been shot during Lifestyles Week at Hedonism II with Woody Harrelson providing the 100% hemp costumes. If you enjoyed the stultifyingly dull orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, this'll be right up your alley.

Also reprising her role from the first film is the late Gloria Foster as the Oracle, only her weird, David Lynchian scenes of the first film have been replaced this time by a psychobabble soliloquy delivered in what looks like an inner-city school basketball court. This scene is the Grateful Dead drum solo of the film in that it is your cue to take a bathroom break.

A film like this has to have a bad guy. Last time, the scene-stealing Joe Pantoliano betrayed his compatriots and was killed off. He is sorely missed here. In this film, the bad guy (Lambert Wilson) is, in a rather fortuitous coincidence, an obnoxious French bon vivant, made even more annoying by spouting off even more faux-Zen than does Morpheus. Who could blame the delectable Monica Belluci as a kind of computer virus in a push-up spandex gown, for ditching him to help Our Heroes escape?

A film that has to try to top something as innovative as The Matrix has a difficult task, and for all that it tries mightily, THE MATRIX RELOADED merely kicks its earlier effects up a notch. Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving, criminally underused here), now can replicate, resulting in one of many fight scenes that go on far too long. Strange albino twins, whose role in the story is never explained, chase Our Heroes in a seemingly endless car chase scene that goes on forever, and plays as if the Dukes of Hazzard somehow ended up riding shotgun with Jake and Elwood Blues, with The Terminator in the rumble seat.

"Well, you just don't get it," I can already hear the fanboys saying in unison as they replicate into hundreds of Cornel Wests, who told Time Magazine, "the brothers are very into epic poetry and philosophy, into Schopenhauer and William James...Larry Wachowski knows more about Hermann Hesse than most German scholars." So what? J.R.R. Tolkien was also into epic poetry and philosophy, with an expertise in linguistics to boot. But Tolkien knew how to tell a story, something the Wachowskis still demonstrate only a limited ability to do.

-- Jill Cozzi

Review text copyright © 2003 Jill Cozzi and Mixed Reviews. All rights reserved. Reproduction of text in whole or in part in any form or in any medium without express written permission of Mixed Reviews or the author is prohibited.

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