When The Matrix was launced upon the movie going world it came in like a hurricane and blew just about everybody away. The Wachowski brothers who has given us a highly impressive debut with the sexual thriller Bound, had done the almost impossible with The Matrix, in terms of it's groundbreaking effects, not to mention it's mind bending storyline.
The Matrix fans excitement levels went into hyperdrive when they learnt that there would be 2 more Matrix films to come... something that the brothers had in their minds from the beginning.. one has to wonder if that's where they should have left them.
RELOADED proved a financial success at the box office, but did leave a bad taste in far more fans mouths than anticipated (self included).

This certainly effected REVOLUTIONS when unleashed some 6 months later, as the box office taking where down a few hundred Million, even though it served to conclude the trilogy.

With RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS being made back to back and released theatrically only 6 months apart the storyline of REVOLUTIONS is a direct continuation of RELOADED, and REVOLUTIONS literally starts where RELOADED left off. We find Neo is some sort of coma, where he is trapped inside the Matrix, but isn't plugged in. The Oracle has taken on a new form (a very convenient way to get around the very sad and untimley death of the original oracle wonderfully played by Gloria Foster.) Trinity is still madly in love with Neo and will go to any lengths for him (as any self-respecting parma'kai would :). And Morpheous is still his brooding self spurting words of wisdoms. We are also introduced into a whole new slew of characters inside the Matrix. Australia's own Bruce Spence takes on the role of the psychotic Tra still kicking some serious but as Morpheous' ex, Niobe, and Smith is spawing himself off to create a legion of his own minions.

Full of leather-cladding with ultrahip coolness, Matrix REVOLUTIONS makes up for quite a bit over RELOADED and makes for a nice ending to the trilogy. Still, i expected more, given what was delivered with the mind-blowing original.

VIDEO
While the film mightn't be as good as the original, the transfer for this DVD is certainly impressive, for the most part.

99% of the extras have very wisely been dumped onto a 2nd DVD, leaving the entire disc to the 2 hour film (minus a few meg for the trailers).
The End result is a very pleasing Anamorphic Widescreen transfer which undoubtedly comes damn close to representing the visual look sort after by the Brothers W.

Sharpess is perfect, black level is magically dark and yet still offers stellar image depth. Colour saturation is consistently stable throughout, with the intended manipulation of hues, giving a "matrix green" look.
I do however, have one problem to raise...telecine wobble... who'd have thought it possible, but i tell ya what...it's there for most of the film, which i find highly surprising.... i had to double check my projector and screen weren't moving at first, but sure enough, they were perfectly stable, but the film itself wasn't.

Before you get too concerned over this, i consider this much like low level mpeg artifacting... if you don't look for it, you won't see it... just avoid starring too hard at the sides of your screen as you'll see it quite clearly if there's an edge nearby (and the larger the viewing screen, the easier it is to identify this). I quite happily watched this film through a couple of times and more often than not forgot that it was even doing it, as there is so much about this transfer that is so good.

Wisely spread over 2 layers of an RSDL DVD the rather sneaky layer change occurs on a natural quick fadeout at 55:08..in fact on my Denon player it's totally seemless (i had to use a sony dvd player with a layer change display readout to find it this time around.)

AUDIO
YIKES!! I LOVE THIS SOUNDTRACK!!. But first, some interesting factoids. Prior to the release of RELOADED, the Dolby website had listed RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS as being mixed in Dolby EX. About 1 month later, the listings were taken down...hmmmmm.. they did the same thing with X-MEN, and it is now offically listed on the Dolby site as being in "EX"...go figure...
For several of the international releases of these 2 Matrix films you will find they have been released to DVD with not only Dolby 5.1 EX tracks, but also DTS-ES 6.1 matrix tracks. the USA, UK and Australian releases of these films make absolutely no mention of either DVDs being in EX...so they regrettably can't be offically labelled as being mixed for 6.1 surround sound.

I've listed to these films several times over and have always engaged Dolby EX playback on my amp.. they PERFECTLY decode to 6.1 playback, and can highly recommend anyone with a 6.1 capable amp to engage 6.1 as you will LOVE what you hear from this Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound track (encoded at the preferred 448kbps).

Surround sound actively is astonishinly good with pin-point precision when all 3 surround channels are present and offer a very wide and deep surround sound presence. Ambience is also of the highest quality with the subtlest of sounds making their presene known.

The Front soundstage is well above board delivering clarity and high end detail in spades. Dialogue is highly intellegable throughout, even when the action heats up.

LFE and main channel bass will also push your system to the limit..so please be VERY careful when you first start playing this film as it if your bass is too high, it will bottom it out during the opening sequence. (BTW did you know that you can pick up the "RADIO SHACK" Sound Pressure Level Meter from Tandy for about $50... definitely worth the investment..so be sure to convince a friend to go buy one, and use there's :)

EXTRAS
REVOLUTIONS features some excellent animated menus with great sound. ALL featurettes also include English subtitles, though be aware that from time to time you may not be able to easily read the text, seeing as there is occasionally text on the screen itself as something is either being described or it part of the computer imagery. All Featurettes are 4x3 formatted with the odd letterboxed sequence from the film itself.