The Wachowskis introduce the final chapter in the Matrix series

Every program must have a purpose. If not, it is deleted. Four years ago the Wachowski brothers created The Matrix, a world infused with almost careless profundity. Their film was an elaborate series of rhetorical questions, but the high-flown hypotheticals were interspersed with high-tech shoot-outs to cleanse the palate. It was deep, but gutturally satisfying.

Revolutions, the third installment in the Matrix trilogy, doesn't live up to expectations--but these were the expectations of a year ago; before Reloaded crashed and burned. Surprisingly, Revolutions has its moments. The adrenaline's there, in impeccably choreographed fight scenes and the requisite special effects.

The shabby, minimalist grandeur of the burnt-out future landscape is similarly compelling. At one point Neo and Trinity evade a swarm of sentinels, slicing through electrical storms and rising briefly above the clouds, until they see the sky--our sky--clear, blue and calm. For a single instant they hang motionless against a spectacularly normal horizon, before nosediving back into the underworld. It was this same seamless transition between worlds that captivated in the original film. Once again, salvation seems as simple as flipping a switch, and reprisal merely a matter of waiting for the clouds to part.

The dilemma of answering a rhetorical question is the obvious stumbling block to this particular sequel. The problem with the Matrix trilogy is that its plot was always incidental. Did we ever really care about Zion? The last remnants of human civilization were best imagined in the abstract, as saviors of humankind--not as survivors scuttling through piles of trash in a post-apocalyptic underground. Zion, in all its heaving, humping, raving, pulsing glory, taints the landscape of the Matrix with fallible human weakness. It's the oldest story in the world: purity of the mind, corruption of the flesh. The Matrix was new, but Zion is very, very old.

The most difficult task this time around was sustaining the same level of intellectual accessibility that made The Matrix so appealing in the first place. The Matrix jumped between cultish fantasy and sober contemplation, emulating the religious sensation of intellectual mysticism. It was self-indulgent proof that science fiction can be intelligent, and we reveled in a movie that, like, made us think.