A futuristic kung-fu fantasy with terrific stunts and a stunted script Keanu Reeves plays Neo, a computer hacker who thinks he's living in the twentieth century but is really a pawn in a giant virtual-reality game controlled by twenty-second-century programmers. Dude! Damned if I can explain more about this muddled mind-bender, except to say that Neo is recruited by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) to join her leader, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), in a rebellion against those who would enslave them.…

By Kenneth Turan, Times Film Critic

Wednesday March 31, 1999

''Imagine you're feeling a little like Alice, tumbling down the

rabbit hole,'' someone says in the dazzling and disorienting ''The Matrix,'' and who has the strength to argue?

A wildly cinematic futuristic thriller that is determined to overpower

the imagination, ''The Matrix'' combines traditional science-fiction

premises with spanking new visual technology in a way that almost defies description. Like it or not, this is one movie…