I found the underlying concepts of this movie totally absurd - such as the use of humans as an energy source (and what is the energy source keeping the humans alive?) or the fact that computers would even care what was going on in the heads of their batteries.

At another level the philosophy is also absurd. A key feature is that the Agents are able to go beyond the limitations of the Matrix and perform "superhuman" actions. Our hero is someone who - after much searching by Morpheus - is also able to go beyond the limits. However, since all we are talking about here is going beyond a set of computer generated rules why is our hero limited to the same level of skills as the Agents? Why is he not able to go beyond their rules to a still higher level?

It was just a flimsy excuse for some fancy effects.