With The Matrix: Resurrections, director Lana Wachowski and novelists David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon have written one of the year's best screenplays.

Nearly two decades after The Matrix: Revolutions, the scribes intelligently and playfully wrestle with the series’ legacy as well as reboot culture, spinning a dizzying tale that dares viewers to keep pace while seamlessly mixing Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) with new characters.

But someone else should have made this movie.

Whereas The Matrix and its less-celebrated sequels pushed the boundaries of action filmmaking, framing and enacting fights and shootouts in crisp yet innovative ways, Resurrections is sorely lacking in visual flair. Instead, its showdowns carry a frustrating anonymity where much of the combat is obscured by thoughtless close-ups and over-editing. It might seem innovative to fans of Antoine Fuqua’s movies, but not to viewers whose standards were elevated back in 1999 by these same creative minds.

Nevertheless, this may simply be what a Wachowski film looks like in 2021. Despite the compelling concept of the machines having reinserted Neo and Trinity into The Matrix for mysterious purposes, and a band of believers — aided by charming benevolent robot allies — striving to free them and restore a lasting peace, the film’s execution is hampered by an aesthetic and overall tone more in line with the unfortunate Speed Racer and Jupiter Ascending than The Matrix trilogy. (The excellent Cloud Atlas, co-directed with Tom Tykwer, is its own beast, but also shares some DNA with Resurrections.)

Still, within this compromised milieu, fascinating imagery emerges such as Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Candyman) presenting as a magnetic nanoparticle entity, and operator Seek (Toby Onwumere, Sense8) spectrally appearing alongside his captain Bugs (Jessica Henwick, Game of Thrones) to guide her through The Matrix.

Thanks to the terrific script and the simple joy of seeing Reeves and Moss reprise these iconic roles, Resurrections moves at a respectable clip, delivering a handful of awe-inspiring moments rooted in the original trilogy yet filtered through this new style. For the fourth installment in a saga that’s gone 18 years without a sequel, its vibrancy and wit are impressive, and Wachowski clearly has an inspired vision for her characters. But over that time, other filmmakers have emerged with the skillsets to make the most of such crackling material, and might have given Resurrections the directorial boost it deserves.

Grade: B. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande. Also available to stream via HBO Max until Jan. 22.

(Photo: Warner Bros.)

4K/Blu-ray bonus features

• No One Can Be Told What The Matrix Is

• Resurrecting The Matrix

• Neo x Trinity: Return to the Matrix

• Allies + Adversaries: The Matrix Remixed

• Matrix for Life

• The Matrix Reactions

o   Echo Opening 

o   Deus Ex Machina 

o   Welcome to IØ

o   Bullet Time Redux

o   Morpheus vs Neo 

o   Exiles Fight 

o   Neo vs Smith 

o   The San Fran Chase 

o   The San Fran Jump