Why does everyone think this movie is a masterpiece? What differentiates it from your typical, run of the mill, enjoyable action movie? Nothing, except maybe that horridness that is Keanu Reeves.... The action sequences are pretty nice, I'll give you that. But if you want to watch really good action sequences go rent some old-school chinese movies. Or even new ones. Those have the coolest fight scenes imaginable. And the special affects, they were nice, oo, aah... But all they were was eye-candy. They were not the kind of special affects that are so good you don't notice them. Those are the best kind of effects, they mesh with the movie so well that they don't distract from the plot, of course The Matrix doesn't really have a plot. The movie tries to be Cyberpunk, it's based on the novel by William Gibson who is a fantastic writer, so I have to assume that the novel is good. But this movie tries to sort of ask about virtual reality and "where are we headed?" and so forth, but it does it so poorly where so many others have done well. Try reading (that's right, _reading_ Gasp!) Otherland, or Neuromancer, or the Diamond Age or Snow Crash or any of the great cyberpunk novels if you want to know what this movie should have been. Or even some movies, like eXistenZ which is not really as like the Matrix as some people would have you believe. Anyway, that's my two cents.