Cert: 15
Directed By: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss and Hugo Weaving

Talk about tough acts to follow: The original 1999 Matrix, a critical and commercial smash, came almost as a revelation out of nowhere. The Matrix Reloaded, the first of two sequels, faces a level of expectation that probably can't be met. Creating a satisfying sequel under any circumstances is rife with potential problems. Suffice it to say that writer-director brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski dodge many of these bullets, if not with quite so much grace as Neo. The film is hugely entertaining but, by necessity, not as fresh as its predecessor.

The Matrix Reloaded starts at some undefined time after the end of the first movie. The last transmission from a ship called the Osiris warns Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) that the machines are digging through the earth's crust straight down toward Zion, the last remaining human city. This snippet of information refers back to the animated short The Final Flight of the Osiris, which will appear with eight other shorts on the upcoming Animatrix DVD. But these films are not prerequisite to understanding the story.

Morpheus's Nebuchadnezzar and the other ships are ordered home to Zion to defend the city, setting off a series of internal political battles of strategy that constitutes the slowest part of the film. The problem is that there can be no direct connection to the Matrix from within Zion, and as in the first film, almost all the interesting stuff happens in the Matrix. Luckily the Wachowskis have contrived a reason for Morpheus and the gang to leave town, so the fun can begin again. However, the initial 45 minutes are a total yawn of esoteric gogitations and superficial psychotechno verbiage (twaddle to you and me).

However, once jacked in, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and crew receive instructions from the Oracle (the late Gloria Foster, who provides a likable human relief from the crew's often machinelike humans) that resemble a virtual-reality anorakie computer hackers' treasure hunt: Find this character/software module, so you can get instructions to the next character/software module, who will have information that will help you find this other crucial locale, which will tell you how to protect Zion. Or something. It's all very bring-me-the-broom-of-the-Wicked-Witch-of-the-West, with the fate of the world at stake.

Some of these developments increase our knowledge of what the Matrix is and how it works, but others feel like gratuitous plot embellishments, without the sense of necessity and inevitability that marked everything in the original. Almost nothing in the first film could be removed without damaging our eventual understanding; in Reloaded, there's lots of stuff that provides excitement or is simply, in and of itself, really cool, but could be written out. The ephemeral, dreadlocked albino twins, for instance: shades of Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice but blonded out...so what?

With the November release of part three, The Matrix Revolutions, however, these cavils may turn out to be incorrect. Maybe there is a more crucial metaphysical payoff to the twins and other new characters, like the Merovingean (Lambert Wilson), a snotty French avatar, and his frustrated wife (an ill- and under-used Monica Bellucci). But, so far, some of this stuff is reminiscent of Back to the Future 3, a perfectly okay film that nonetheless felt like an unnecessary tag-on.

Fight director Yuen Wo Ping provides his usual dazzling choreography, but that too feels both a bit compromised and a bit "been there, done that." If Neo fighting one Mr. Smith is great, that doesn't mean that Neo fighting 100 Mr. Smiths is 100 times as great - particularly when so much is accomplished through CGI and camera tricks.

It's a great thing that CGI frees stunt men from doing some really dangerous stuff now. But, injudiciously applied, it can rob an action sequence of all power. The best action scenes, even in sci-fi and horror flicks, are somehow rooted in reality.

Many Hong Kong movie fans disdain the use of wires and harnesses as unauthentic or even cheating. But even those tricks are not as far from reality as supernaturally speeded-up CGI simulations. The further we get from reality, the less thrilling the effect is. There simply is little genuine suspense in these scenes; the excitement is more the result of a physiological reaction to fast cutting, camera movement and sound effects than it is of empathetic investment in the characters.

Aggravating this is the more general "rule" problem: Who has the power to do what? And why? Why does Neo fight and fight the Smith army and almost lose several times when we know that, from the first punch, he could have simply done his Superman act and flown away? Why can he beat them? "Because he's the One and can do anything" isn't a good enough answer. If his powers are unbounded, then there's no suspense and no point to the entire thing. If they are bounded, we need to know how. The film's best action moments involve a motorcycle dodging between speeding cars, because these at least look real. The worst action moments involve Neo swooping down from the sky to pull someone out of harm's way. That Neo could be considered a deus ex machina may be a conscious joke on the Wachowskis' part, but it grows old.

The answers to some of these questions may be implicit in the computer mechanics that the Matrix represents: A fight could be two cyberentities - a software module and the neural impulses of a jacked-in human - "punching" to infect each other's code and "parrying" by mutating into immunity from that punch. The end of the first film suggested that Neo's power stems from his newfound ability to see the code, i.e., bits and bytes, behind the Matrix's "reality" and to therefore respond to what's really there rather than to the image.

But can anybody keep all this stuff in his or her head in a useful way, while watching the film?

The last few scenes include a baffling event that points toward a possible upcoming explanation in part three. We won't spoil it, but, if it's where we're heading - and it could be a total red herring - things could turn out to be either very satisfying or very irritating. Be forewarned that The Matrix Reloaded is really only half of a two-part story. Unlike The Matrix, it ends with a cliffhanger and represents less of an independent whole. (If you sit through the nine or so minutes of closing credits, you'll see a preview of The Matrix Revolutions.)

One final thing...Keanu...loosen up man, it's supposed to be a film and you are allowed to 'act' occasionally!

The Truth About Charlie

Near the end of The Truth About Charlie, two characters dash madly after the film's McGuffin, first via subway, then on foot. They finally engage in a rough-and-tumble struggle on a staircase, before they're individually yanked back to the landing in humiliation. It's one of several moments in which the playfulness of the scene never quite masks the seriousness beneath, which would suggest the handywork of director Jonathan Demme even if he weren't listed in the credits. Charlie shares that tone with its source material, Stanley Donen's 1963 film Charade, a Hitchcockian thriller that plays light and loose until it turns deadly.

Even given the daunting task of remaking a well-loved film that starred Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, the director would have a hard time finding a vehicle better suited to the sensibility he brought to Married To The Mob and Something Wild. With Charlie, Demme seems aware of that - maybe a bit too aware, since he's made a film so frothy and energetic that the fun starts to exhaust itself after a while. Stepping into the Hepburn role with an abundance of grace, Thandie Newton plays a woman who returns to Paris from a Caribbean holiday intending to become a divorcee, but fated to discover she's a widow instead. After coming home to a ransacked apartment, Newton is whisked to a police interrogation, shown a handful of passports bearing her late husband's picture and a string of unfamiliar names, asked a series of questions she can't answer, and let loose to the wilds of Paris, where shadowy figures take an aggressive interest in the few possessions in her shoulder bag. Fortunately, or so it would seem, she has two people looking after her: handsome stranger Mark Wahlberg and Tim Robbins, beautifully playing a hilariously stiff man who claims to be an American agent.

This may sound confusing, but keeping the story straight is less of a concern than sorting through the possibilities it presents. Charlie takes place not in the Paris captured by Donen, but in the one created by the French New Wave. Demme piles on the references, giving cameos to Agnès Varda, Anna Karina, and, most memorably, cabaret singer Charles Aznavour. Even without them, the line of influence would be clear. Though indisputably a thriller, Charlie abandons itself to little cinematic rhapsodies, self-reflexive asides, and montages of Paris locations cued to a soundtrack of cool French pop (Gotan Project etc), all of which often seems more vital than the main order of business.

Eventually, that business gets in the way, as the story asserts itself while winding down to a less-than-thrilling climax, and Wahlberg repeatedly proves to be so far out of his range. (He should seem dapper and conniving, but instead acts like he hasn't shaken his confused-astronaut character from Planet Of The Apes.) Long stretches of Charlie combine charm and suspense to remarkable effect, but the attempts to sustain a tone of romantic abandon would succeed much better if an interrupted mood and a broken one weren't pretty much the same thing.