The Matrix (1999) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on The Matrix

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 10 November 2026 · The Pros 80 · The Punters 100 · Spore Score 84 · How we write our takes

Why The Punters rate it higher than The Pros

The Matrix is a film audiences adopted as their own. The Punters give it 100, The Pros 80, and the Spore Score is 84. Critics liked it plenty in 1999 and still do, but they tend to mark it as a superb action film with some borrowed philosophy. For viewers it became something bigger: the film that changed how a whole generation thought action cinema could look and feel. That difference in what each side is measuring explains the gap.

What it does well

Lana and Lilly Wachowski took ideas from cyberpunk novels, Hong Kong martial arts films, Japanese anime and first-year philosophy lectures, and turned them into a story anyone can follow. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a programmer who hacks at night under the name Neo, is told by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) that the world he lives in is a simulation built by machines. Take the red pill, and you see the truth. That single choice has passed into everyday language, which is about as good a measure of a film's reach as you will find.

The action still looks fresh. Fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping trained the cast for months, so Reeves, Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity and Hugo Weaving as the icily polite Agent Smith are doing far more of their own fighting than Hollywood stars usually did. Bullet time, the effect where the camera seems to swing around a frozen moment, was copied and parodied for a decade afterwards. The lobby shoot-out and Neo bending away from Smith's bullets on the rooftop are textbook sequences.

Where The Pros have a point

Away from the set pieces, the dialogue can be stiff, and the exposition in the middle hour is heavy. The green-tinted world of the Matrix and the grim real world outside it are stylish, but the supporting crew on Morpheus's ship are thinly drawn, apart from Joe Pantoliano's treacherous Cypher. And the sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions in 2003 and Resurrections in 2021, have muddied some people's memories of how tight the original is.

Who it is for

Everyone who has not seen it, and anyone who has only seen the sequels. It is rated 15 in the UK for its violence, so it suits older teenagers upwards. It also works brilliantly as a double bill with the anime it borrows from, such as Ghost in the Shell.

Context

The Matrix opened in the US on 31 March 1999 and in the UK that June, and it was shot largely in Sydney. It won all four Oscars it was nominated for: film editing, sound, sound effects editing and visual effects, beating Star Wars: Episode I to the last one. It made a star of Moss, gave Reeves the defining role of his career until John Wick came along, and turned two little-known film-makers into one of the most influential teams in modern cinema.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Must-see, with a Spore Score of 84. A clever, cool, hugely influential action film that still plays like a dream. The Pros are a touch reserved. The Punters, for once, are the ones with the better case.