Keanu Reeves plays a man who goes by Thomas Andersen in the analog world but by the handle "Neo" in the digital realm. In his analog existence, Andersen is a top-notch programmer at the suggestively named MetaCortex software corporation, working in the most despairingly gray and bleak of Dilbert cubicles.  On the surface his life appears quite normal, but he is on to something that will soon turn his world inside out.  He is simultaneously contacted by the authorities and the revolutionaries to help wage the final war against the opposing side. Laurence Fishburne plays Morpheus, the leader of a small rebellion bent on destroying the Matrix. Who will get to him first, which side he will choose, and whether he will measure up to their lofty expectations is the drama that plays out in the film.

But far more than the eye-popping special effects and heart-pumping soundtrack, it is the ideas, the writing and the dialogue that dazzle in The Matrix. The Matrix is the intelligent agency behind the bits and bytes of the computer screen, and it is a malevolent intelligence. The ideal (ie, transcendent of the Platonic "real") reality that the revolutionaries live in is some 200 years in the future.  All that's left of our glorious technological systems is a network of underground sewers, which they travel through in a hovercraft called the Nebuchadnezzar.  But no amount of sci-fi background can prepare you for the mind-altering experience of trying to understand this world.

The experience of this film on the big screen is not to be missed, especially seated in the center of a modern theatre with a good surround-sound or THX system. From the preview or the poster alone, you'd think The Matrix was just like any other standard-brand clunker from what Bruce Millard calls the Hollywood Edsel dealership, in which EDSEL is an acronym for either Explosions Dismemberments, Special Effects and Leftism or else Existential Despair, Sex and Excrable Language.  But look beyond the superficial fact that Hollywood, by virtue of the codes and conventions of selling its products, is forced to aim them at an eighth-grade mentality.  This film is actually a graduate thesis on consciousness, transcendence, and salvation cleverly disguised in the sheep's clothing of the action-adventure genre.  The film's ability to visually manifest very subtle concepts will cut new neural networks in your brain and you will leave the theater with a distinct feeling of aliveness, awareness and wonder. Don't ignore that feeling, because this film, unlike any of the dozens of other films it pays homage to or appropriates through intertextual reference, is doing something absolutely unique in the history of cinema.

The greatest joy in all of this is in the identity of writer/director team Larry and Andy Wachowski.  The official website only gives this mysterious bit of information:  "Larry & Andy Wachowski (Writers/Directors) have been working together for 30 years. Their most recent feature film, "Bound," which they wrote and directed, stars Gina Gershon, Jennifer Tilly and Joe Pantoliano. Little else is known about them."  The interviews section of the website is noticeably absent an interview of the Wachowskis, and when the other interviewees discuss them it is only with the usual "wonderful, hope to work with them again" sort of adulation expected in the world of professional brown-nosing.  Whether this is more Hollywood mystery marketing technique, or whether Warner Brothers wanted to hide any real information about the Wachowski's until they saw if the film flopped or succeeded, is anyone's guess.  What's clear now is that there needn't have been any doubt.  Subsequent to the film's release, several good articles have appeared on the Wachowski's.  These guys used to be housepainters, that's right, housepainters, who kept talking, reading, and thinking, and finally produced the screenplay they'd always wanted to.