Dreaming by Numbers

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

All the time you thought it was the media. Or maybe the swollen federal bureaucracy. Or just possibly the irreducible idiocy of humankind. That is to say, like Neo (Keanu Reeves), the reluctant but deeply curious hero of The Matrix, you had a vague sense that something was not quite right about life as we live it, that something was preventing you from realizing all your potential.

Luckily, the Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, have finally figured it all out: the machines really have taken over the world. Yeah, sure, you had that idea a couple of sleepless nights ago and immediately dismissed it as farfetched. But that's why your life remains Dilbert-like and why the giddily self-confident Wachowskis are (potentially) the dauphins of the new Hollywood.

Clever lads that they are, they offer us a world in which most of the population consists of dronelike clones created and managed, without their knowing it, by superintelligent humanoid machines (men in black, of course). Even more cleverly, they posit, in Reeves' character, a modern Everyman--a computer hacker, naturally--who may be the Messiah whom the remnants of authentic humanity have long awaited. These resisters, called Zionists, live near the earth's core and are represented up top by the very brainy Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and a small band of rebel fighters, living by their wits and their martial-arts skills (nicely enhanced by special effects). A lot of what they do and endure consists of spins on the sci-fi past. There are references to everything from the Alien movies to The Terminator to Soylent Green, but that's what we have for a living mythology these days, and the Wachowskis are bold and knowing in their deployment of it. They're acknowledging a tradition, not ripping it off.

The same thing applies to their reflections on such matters as artificial intelligence, alternative realities and the space-time continuum. You feel they have at least read the better magazine articles on these topics--enough to provide a little more subtext than we expect to find in enterprises like The Matrix. Besides, there's real wit in their presentation of the Zionist oracle (who turns out to be a motherly black lady baking cookies in an old-fashioned kitchen), and real sexiness in Carrie-Anne Moss as super-buff Trinity, leading Neo to his destiny. 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. And that's a rare and welcome commodity in mass-market moviemaking these days.

--By Richard Schickel