In the film from which there is no escape and no going back, The Matrix, the writer-director team of Andy and Larry Wachowski presented a grim choice between truth and illusion. The truth: We are born and die as captives on a despoiled Earth, where intelligent machines keep us drugged and confined so they may tap our bioenergy. The illusion: We wake to an alarm clock, then drive to a tall building and work from 9 till 5, after which we return home and watch TV till bedtime--all of which is a mere computer simulation, wired into our nervous systems by the machines so we won't wither too soon.

On the one hand, a nightmarish reality; on the other, a deadly boring dream. Had The Matrix shown these to be life's only choices, I doubt that moviedom would now be supine beneath the boots of its sequel. But the Wachowski brothers offered audiences a third, winning possibility: being cool. They imagined that a small band of adventurers--the cool are always few--had learned to pass back and forth between the dismal, industrial horror of the real world and the pristine Vancouverishness of the simulation. I will give The Matrix this much credit: It defined coolness precisely as a matter of this crossing over, shucking both the agonies of creatural life and the time-killing daydreams of social routine.

Of course, coolness is also a matter of style and attitude. In The Matrix, the performers' fallback pose was studiously unexpressive--or unstudiously so, in the case of Keanu Reeves--in the manner of people who feign indifference even to their own disaffection. Dark sunglasses added to the masklike effect. (To cite a deep student of the subject, Norman Mailer: The person who wears shades is signaling, "I can look at you, but you have no right to look at me." Or, in Matrix terms: "I'm just passing through your lousy idea of reality.") The clothes were African-American in inspiration--lots of black leather and tight black vinyl--and the fisticuffs Chinese, showing that cool people take an interest in a variety of cultures. (I mean, they enjoy turning ethnic associations into mix-'n'-match fashion statements.) The firepower? Cool to the extreme.

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