Fraternal writing-directing duo Larry and Andy Wachowski put themselves in a similar situation with their 1996 debut _Bound_. In that revelatory film, they took the unpromising, tin foil-level pairing of Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon as larcenous lesbian lovers and turned into cinematic gold--no less than one of the best films of that year. And with _The_Matrix_, the Wachowski Brothers have once again achieved such a feat of alchemy, blending these modest parts into a stunning whole that really has no business working as brilliantly as it does.

Reeves's blank demeanor is a perfect fit for the often befuddled character of Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer who leads a second life in cyberspace under the name "Neo." One night he is contacted by the enigmatic hacker Trinity (Moss) on behalf of the even more enigmatic Morpheus (Fishburne) regarding a mysterious concept that has been haunting him for ages--"the Matrix."

None of this may make much sense in and of itself, but to go into more detail is the ruin one of the great pleasures of the film: that of discovery--that of the story's the secrets as the layers are gradually peeled away and of an entirely new world as imagined by the Wachowskis (and brought to spectacular visual life by special effects producer Matthew Ferro). Once again, they have come up with a story that is smart, challenging, and completely unpredictable, and their direction is characterized by an uncommon attention to detail. For example, the line deliveries by Hugo Weaving (who plays the sinister Agent Smith) initially strike one as laughably stiff, but it is eventually revealed to serve a purpose.

_The_Matrix_ is more than a head trip, however; the Wachowskis deliver the action goods and then some. They are the first American filmmakers to successfully duplicate the wild abandon of the Hong Kong action style, from a number of exhilarating martial arts fight scenes (choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, director of such high-flying HK films as _Iron_Monkey_ and _Wing_Chun_) to some of the best Woo knockoff shootouts one is likely to find anywhere. As viscerally exciting as these passages are, what is especially impressive is how the Wachowskis come up with an underlying explanation for all the gravity-defying derring-do--something no Hong Kong filmmaker has ever bothered to do.