IN The Matrix , Thomas "Neo" Anderson, the Messiah for the Nintendo generation, freed human minds from the Matrix. Job done. That was The One, as post-modern pop culture as post-modern fantasy action movies could go.

However, Neo also hooked a new sci-fi generation, looking beyond Star Wars and the Alien movies, so a sequel was inevitable. Not one but two in fact at a cost of $300 million: The Matrix Revolutions will complete the picture in November.

Here's the impenetrable plot, which jump-starts the story without the aid of a refresher course four years on from the first movie. Neo (clothes horse Keanu Reeves and his sunglasses and flowing coat again) has established the last human enclave on Earth in the subterranean city of Zion. However, the Machine Army has amassed 250,000 sentinels to drill through the city's defences and wipe out every inhabitant, starting 72 hours from now.

The Oracle's Prophecy has foreseen that Neo - rearrange the letters and he becomes the One - will end the war, with the aid of his sleek lover Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and evangelical rebel leader Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne, coming on like some kind of rap king). And so they must return to the Matrix and save whatever world it is they are in.

In keeping with The Matrix's premise of alternative realities and virtual worlds, The Matrix Reloaded is the virtual companion piece of the original with style to the tip of its shiny black boots but content that makes as much sense as the extravagant Leeds United accounts.

Truly, writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski are blinding you with their science, because the brothers' cod-religious explorations of "themes of technological alienation, freewill, the cost of ignorance and the price of knowledge" play second fiddle to the design catwalk, special effects and trite comic-book dialogue.

The 138 minutes drag by as the Wachowskis reveal themselves to be one-Matrix ponies with their elaborate, initially spectacular yet repetitive use of freeze-frame, high-flying, martial-art sequences that peak with Neo's combat with 100 identical Agent Smiths (Hugo Weaving) - as if we needed any more Smiths in the phonebook of life.

The bravura brothers can handle car and motorbike chases but The Matrix mission appears no nearer to its resolution and no nearer to making sense. After The Matrix Overloaded, may The Matrix Revolutions engage more than the eyes, ears and yawns.

Updated: 09:38 Friday, May 23, 2003