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Poisoned and derelict, Earth is controlled by the Matrix, a computer-generated intelligence feeding off the human race. Hidden underground, the city of Zion is the only haven for those who have escaped Matrix programming. But when the Matrix unleashes machines to destroy Zion within 72 hours, the city's Council must decide its best defence. According to prophecy, the war can be ended by a super-human "One", but although this role appears to fit Neo, recently wrested from Matrix control by Zion's militant visionary Morpheus, he has no idea how to proceed.

Consulting the Oracle, Neo describes his recurring nightmare in which Trinity, the girl to whom he owes his life, is shot by a Matrix agent. The Oracle indicates that the solution to this and other possible futures can only be unlocked by the Keymaker, held captive by the Merovingian, a dissolute consumer of Matrix luxuries. After fighting off a horde of cloned Agent Smiths (a Matrix assassin), Neo teams up with Morpheus and Trinity to bargain for the Keymaker's release. The Merovingian refuses, but his wife Persephone, for the price of a kiss from Neo, hands the Keymaker over. In a ferocious motorway struggle, they at last get him to safety.

The Keymaker reports that only the ‘One' can open the door leading to the source of knowledge, and only at a precise time. As they approach the required location, they are attacked by more Agent Smiths, and both Trinity and the Keymaker, who passes the vital key to Neo, are mortally wounded. Through the door, Neo meets the Architect, designer of the Matrix, who comments that this is the sixth time Zion has been under threat and offers two further doors, one leading to Zion's defence, the other to Trinity's rescue. Neo selects the route to Trinity, and restores her to life. As Zion faces destruction, its defenders fear that the prophecy was a lie.

Conforming to producer Joel Silver's "action-beat" strategy (jolts of excitement every ten minutes), the Wachowski Brothers have compiled their Matrix sequel from scenes of exuberant overkill loosely punctuated with cross-references, trivia and supplementary information. Whether or not the gaps in Reloaded represent material being held in reserve for the trilogy's concluding part, the hints and allusions they provide are numerous enough to render a Matrix - an infinite network of portents and possibilities - of the film itself.

As before, labels have been given to the saga's participants to establish their essential character and probable purpose. Tank's place on the ship is taken by Link, who indeed keeps the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar connected, while Niobe, destined according to myth to lose all her children and be turned into a rock, is clearly a weighty item for the next episode. We may be forgiven for not knowing that Councillor West is in fact a Princeton professor playing himself, but there's no missing the resonances of such names as Ballard, Mifune, Kali, Seraph, Cain and yes, Abel.

Of special appeal is the anguished Persephone, trapped in the Matrix just as her legendary namesake was confined to the Underworld. She, it seems, does not get the regular eight months off for good behaviour; stuck with an odious husband, the Merovingian (to be succeeded by a Carolingian in the next episode?), she mourns the lack of real emotion in the heartless luxury of the Matrix environment. That she finds consolation in Neo's kiss is an interesting anomaly: with the Matrix it seems there is no true passion, yet Neo can produce an adequate semblance of erotic interest. Maybe he's faking it. And maybe Persephone knows.

The Merovingian scenes are particularly inventive, with their swanky restaurant setting (Le Vrai, of course), the fascinatingly computerised cake consumption, and the confirmation that the Girl in Red continues to thrive as a Matrix programme. The Wachowskis, who might just see themselves in the ghostly homicidal Twins, also introduce a further dimension in the form of Andree Melly whose snarl in Brides of Dracula - glimpsed on television at one point - proposes that a mutual vampirism, with its longevity and its loneliness, exists both between the Matrix and its captives and between the captives themselves. The theme of the Undead throws extra light, too, on the activities of Agent Smith, Neo's nemesis, who enlists new clones by clasping them by the throat in an orgy of self duplication, and mocks their resistance with an ironic "Me, me, me..."

Open to everything from Baudrillard to Superman, the Wachowskis can also be briskly perfunctory, as if to check we've been paying attention. The gift to Neo of a spoon, for example, makes no sense unless we recall the words of wisdom in the first film from a young spoon-bender in the Oracle's waiting room (and not a lot even then), while the location-finder hearing-aid, instantly recognised by Neo as a device used by the Agents to track him, is quickly forgotten in the fight that follows. No context is given in Reloaded for the glimpse of an Armoured Personnel Unit, which seems destined for a vital role in the battles to come, while the significance of a power struggle between the Councillors or an aborted assassination attempt seem similarly set aside for some other occasion.

The Wachowski dialogues can be disconcertingly banal yet with an unpredictable edge, like the "sweet dreams" wished by Morpheus on the citizens of Zion, overlooking the irony that this is precisely what they would receive from the Matrix. The same valediction occurred in the first film, coming from Cypher, the Judas figure: did he get the habit from Morpheus, or did Morpheus get it from him? Whatever, it's not a phrase to be trusted, any more than the evident silliness of the agreement between Neo and Councillor Hamann that some machines are more reliable than others, or Niobe's confident announcement that "Some things never change (pause) and some do".

But the text, of course, is wholly secondary to the image, beginning as in the first Matrix with Trinity's spectacular escape bid, fully good enough for the encore it duly gets. That Neo versus a hundred Agent Smiths, innumerable high-speed duels, and the great motorway car chase are enthralling to watch for their technical ingenuity cannot quite prevent a certain fatigue by the time the Architect reveals it has all happened five times already. No reflection on the cast, who are immensely watchable (with particular zest from Lambert Wilson and Hugo Weaving), but once more will probably be about enough. Perhaps the Wachowskis can then extract themselves free from their private Matrix and, with another bound, set themselves free.

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