1999 sparked one of the weirdest movie trends, that of the office drone and the many possibilities around him. Office Space centred on an office worker who, through hypnosis and a lot of farce, coasted through his mind-numbing job by just not doing it. Fight Club showed an office worker violently try to reclaim his lost masculinity. None of these films come close to the weirdness of The Matrix, in which an office drone is in fact the most powerful being in the world, except his world is a lie. The Matrix, directed by the now Wachowski sisters, was a sophisticated blockbuster that challenged the very idea of reality.

Keanu Reeves brings his distinct lack of charisma to the role of Neo, the said office worker who find out that the world he knows is actually a computer program called The Matrix. With the help of the mysterious mentor Morpheus (played by Larry Fishburne who completes his transformation into Lawrence Fishburne), and Trinity, a highly skilled warrior, and manipulator of The Matrix, played by Carrie Anne Moss, Neo must defeat Agent Smith, Hugo Weaving as one of cinemas best villains, in order to prove he is the One, a being that can give humans freed from The Matrix a fighting chance against the machines that now rule them.

The Matrix is the most uncommon of movies, it’s an original. Yes it is influenced by Asian anime, particularly Ghost in the Shell, and has the basic plot of a video game complete with Morpheus as the magical helper, and Agent Smith as the boss battle, but in 1999 this was all new. Which shows you how influential the film has become: without it Christopher Nolan would have been laughed out of Hollywood at the mere mention of Inception.

With its intricate plot, which is light years away from the lazy hand-holding of today’s blockbusters, stunning visuals that haven’t dated a bit, and a cast that will be associated with these characters till the end of their careers, and rightly so, and guns, lots of guns, The Matrix is a triumph of filmmaking. Forget the sequels, forget the countless parodies, The Matrix is the real deal, and a film that would let the Wachowski sisters carve out their own niche in Hollywood. While their films since The Matrix haven’t been as good, they have at least been ambitious, more ambitious than anyone else in Hollywood.