The Movie: This conclusion to the Matrix trilogy pretty much flopped. I personally liked it a bit better than the second movie, though the flavor of this one is a lot different from the other two. It replaces all of the philosophical questions with straight wall-to-wall action. After all, it really is the climax that was missing from "Reloaded".

Though the special effects pretty much blow away anything else out there right now, they still somehow disappoint. Maybe it's because we're expecting to just have the mind blowing experience that the first film delivered, which was so far ahead of its time... but now those once mind blowing effects are just clichés, seen all over the place. I guess trying to deliver a completely original and mind blowing experience is a pretty tall order to repeat.

The shortcomings aside, I still appreciate all of the little connections that exist between the two movies, the Animatrix and the "Enter The Matrix" video game. I just wish they hadn't made the character "Ghost" a virtually non-existent character in the movies. In the video game he's a main character, and apparently he's like a life-long best friend of Trinity's... and he's always been secretly in love with her too. Yet despite all this history, he probably says no more than 5 words in both of the Matrix sequels combined. Way to keep my asian brother down!

So what's the final verdict? The final verdict to me is that this is a great action movie if you take it as just an action movie. But it'll never match the philosophical and spiritual impact of the original.

The DVD: This is a two disc set with pretty much just the movie on the first disc, and special featuers on the second disc. There are two separate widescreen and "full" screen versions, so make sure you get the one you want. I, obviously, am reviewing the widescreen version.

The video transfer on this DVD is absolutely phenomenal. The final battle sequence features heavy rainfall throughout, and also tons of strobe light effects. Either of those things on its own usually make for a very big challenge for the video compression... put them together and it's a veritable nightmare. Yet somehow this disc manages to remain virtually compression artifact free through even the toughest of the tough sequences. Simply amazing. The audio also did not disappoint, with crisp, clear audio and smooth use of the soundstage.

The special features are where this DVD really shine. I'm tempted to say that they are better than the main feature! I have a new respect for just how great the special effects really are in this film after going through them... and there is a very neat feature where you can simultaneously see the final product, the storyboards, and behind the scenes footage of the final battle, while being able to select which of the three is featured most prominently. Very, very smooth DVD authoring technique!

Overall I'd say that this is a spectacular DVD release for a film that unfortunately turned out to be a bit less than spectacular. I can only hope that in the future they re-release the original movie on DVD, putting together as great a package as they did for this final installment.