The Matrix

An absolute feast for the eyes, The Matrix is a hugely expensive and inordinately flashy virtual-reality filmic experience that has to be seen to believed. In the nature of these things, today's state-of-the-art SFX very quickly become yesterday's, and it's likely that The Matrix will seem as primitive and dated in 2020 as Tron does now - but for the time being, it's more than good enough to go along with, and a surefire competitor with Star Wars: Phantom Menace for the bulk of the summer's box-office rewards.

Keanu Reeves' surprisingly effective performance in the wonderfully cheesy Devil's Advocate offered the first proof that he's only as bad as the movie he's trapped in, and employed here in the service of a sprawling but razor-sharp narrative, he chips in easily the best performance of his career. The plot is difficult to explain on paper but makes total sense on screen: Reeves' character is an office computer-hacker who is alternately headhunted by a gang of Gestapo-style futuristic cops who wish to destroy him, and by a subversive rebel movement which seeks to liberate humanity from the Orwellian bondage in which it finds itself. Keanu sides, predictably enough, with the good guys, who are led by a mysterious and imposing figure named Morpheus, classily played by the excellent Laurence Fishburne.

The events that unfold have a gripping, mythic, almost Star Wars-style quality to them, with the ultra-futuristic approach backed up by a genuinely old-fashioned sense of morality and honour. The action comes thick and fast, and most importantly of all, it works more on the visceral level than the cerebral - so there's no hanging around waiting for anything to happen, and there's none of the irritatingly impenetrable technobabble that often passes for dialogue in movies of this nature.

Teenage techno-enthusiasts should particularly adore it, but The Matrix works on enough levels to satisfy practically all tastes. Carrie-Ann Moss doesn't look half bad clad in figure-hugging black leather, Fishburne is a truly class act, Keanu is having the game of his life, and the effects put everything else well and truly in the shade.

I yield to no-one in my generalised hatred of summer blockbusters, but every few years there's an exception to prove the rule, and at the very least, Matrix is by far the most enjoyable film of its type since Men in Black. Go see.