VIRTUAL INSANITY

Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne face off in The Matrix.

Some of cinema's biggest blunders have been attempts to realise the superhuman scraps and sci-fi philosophy of comic books. And, as anyone who saw Spawn or Blade will testify, recent quantum leaps in special effects techniques have hardly helped. This month the terrible history of comic-book-to-celluloid bungling comes to an end with the UK release of The Matrix, which recorded the biggest ever Easter opening weekend in the US.

While the film is not based directly on any one comic, writers and directors the Wachowski brothers (previously responsible for Bound, a not-bad bit of lesbian noir) had clearly stormed their local branch of Forbidden Planet before coming up with The Matrix.

The film has all the elements of the best graphic serials. There's a gang of heroes (main hero, hero's bird, mentor and traitor-in-their-midst) who all have enigmatic tags like Neo, Morpheus and Cypher. They dress in that crap cyberpunk way that is the exclusive preserve of comic book pencilers - trenchcoats and leather and boots of a kind only worn this side of cyberspace by skinny white boys in Camden.

Almost inevitably, the villains - called Agents - are intent on keeping a massive global conspiracy quiet. In this case, covering up the fact that the entire human race is being digitally fed an alternate reality that looks like 1999, even though it's actually sometime in the twenty-first century. This plot allows for a lot of clunky statements about reality, hyperreality and virtual reality. More usefully, it also allows for some fantastic mid-air martial arts maneouvres.

The film's ludicrous Water Margin-style leaps and bounds were choreographed by Yeun Wo Ping, a Hong Kong-based master of wirestunt work. He insisted that the cast, including Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne, spend four months of intensive kung fu training and wirework before filming started.

All this Eastern influence and comic-book hyperbole means that The Matrix is more fun that this year's other big blockbuster; if only because, however good Ewan is as the new Obi-Wan, he'll never get to utter 'I know kung fu' with the same gusto as Keanu.

Nick Compton