Forget everything you know now. Forget the sequels, the unending gossip that Neo might or might not be the Messiah and what the heck it really means that “there is no spoon.” Think back to the first time you saw Neo square off against Agent Smith in the dirty subway station. Rather than run, as all mortals had to at this point, Neo turns and stares down the evil agent. We see papers blow between the two men and hear the classic clicking music made famous in Sergio Leone westerns. But while the Wachowski brothers begin the duel by paying homage to cinematic gunslingers, they then proceed to show us things we have never seen before (at least outside a certain genre of Hong Kong cinema). Neo and Agent Smith run off walls, hover in the air and punch at lightning speed. They showed us the now famous “bullet time,” in which the world slows down to reveal what happens when you fire a gun. And although this one ends in a draw with Neo making a cleverly executed escape, it was the duel that led me to turn to a high school buddy and ask, “What the hell just happened?” I’m still asking that question to this day.
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