Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

Welcome to the Reformed Church of Movies.

The Matrix Reloaded is a religious experience, but not in the way you may think. Though, yes, there are more names and allusions to just about every major theology or mythology on the books, the one true god that Reloaded celebrates is the many-faced deity called Movies (the original text uses the now extinct term "Cinema") and Reloaded is both psalm and prophetic book.

Those trickling green numbers that open the film may as well be the curtain in front of the Holy of Holies. As they draw apart they allow us into the dwelling place of Movies. For Andy and Larry Wachowski, this is holy ground and The Matrix Reloaded is holy writ. This is their Empire Strikes Back, a sequel with a different, darker tone that builds on its original and hints at even greater things at hand. It performs the function of a sequel--"the same, but more"--but also coaxes us down some rabbit holes we haven't been to before.

The good ship Nebuchadnezzar prowls the wasted tunnels of earth, a future (concurrent?) world embroiled in a war between humans and machines. Most humans are used as a power source, raised in horrific growing tubes, and gulled into staying there by existing, in their minds, in the Matrix. The Matrix is a simulacrum of the old, real world, an immense program created by the machines. Neo (Keanu Reeves) was freed from his life there and may be the messiah that frees all of mankind from their captivity. Though he's become like a comic book hero himself while in the Matrix, he's left helpless by nightmares of the fate of his love, Trinity (Carrie Anne-Moss).

Meanwhile, the machines that run the scorched planet have found the location of Zion, the last stronghold of mankind. Near the core of the earth (I still haven't figured that one out, by the way) Zion has managed to hold off the attacks but an army of 250,000 is burrowing towards the city and will reach it in 72 hours. Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne, here in the thankless Peter role) believe the only way to stop all of this is to secure the captured Keymaster, who is being held inside the virtual reality world.

There are lots and lots of questions--and diatribes, lots of diatribes--about free will and fate in this movie, which end up sounding like an ironic rage against the machines that control them. As the plot and action unfolds in Reloaded, the rabbit hole goes deeper than we ever anticipated. It's rattling really, and that's impressive for what is being welcomed back nominally as a cool action flick.

But the Wachowskis have so much more in mind. In The Matrix they referenced kung-fu movies, Westerns, and countless other genres; Reloaded incorporates, of all things horror movies, blue movies, and sword-and-sandal/biblical epics in its running time. There are Medusas, vampires, and ghosts. There's even a Hades—a wildly French Hades with an outrageous French accent that Monty Python would love (how this is going to play out at its debut at Cannes this spring will be of more than passing interest). During the Spartacus-like scenes in Zion, a celebration of independence by the humans turns into an orgiastic tumult; one almost expects Aaron to come out bearing the Golden Calf. People gyrate, becoming faceless grinding bodies. If a computer could see what was going on, they'd call it a grand vision of Hell.

Coupling this with the Wachowski-scripted sequences, "The Second Renaissance, Parts I and II" from The Animatrix, raises some serious questions about where the Wachowskis' heads are. The Animatrix--which includes the probably irresponsible "Kid's Story"--provides numerous valuable insights into what happens in Reloaded and has to be viewed for a full appreciation of Reloaded. In "The Second Renaissance, Parts I and II," direct visual references in those animated shorts compare the original treatment of the machines to the worst human atrocities on visual record. This includes the bulldozing of a piles of mechanical bodies into open pits, recollecting, of all things, the Holocaust. An execution of a robot correlates to the Eddie Adams photo of an execution of a Viet Cong in the streets of Saigon. A long conversation that Neo has with Councillor Hamann, the head of Zion's council (played by Anthony Zerbe--the leader of the plague-ridden night creatures from The Omega Man) broaches the symbiotic nature we've had with machines since the inclined plane and lever. Should machines be accorded the same respect, the same inalienable rights as humans? If there is a theology in the Matrix series, this is it. It's heady stuff and it propels Reloaded past the mere action tale, making it a companion piece to A.I..

But it's still a movie, and it's a movie that wants you to be entertained (how can you preach to the non-believers if you can't get them in the pews?). A wild freeway chase, a fight with multiple Agent Smiths, the flying, the explosions--it works hard to please. But as the situations become more unrealistic in the simulacrum, the less it seems to matter. A major Achilles heel of most virtual reality-themed films has been a "it's just a dream anyway" retort that the mind reminds you of while watching it. A key strength of The Matrix was that the virtual world mattered very much and obeyed its own rules. As those rules are bent, and in this case, broken to bits, it loses some of its relevance.

Regardless, it's an ambitious, important work, which manages to be a fast and furious time at the movies while also being an interesting applicant to the canonical works of cinema.