"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others."

This was a much anticipated movie for me, so I really wanted to give it a proper sit down and give it my full attention. It turned out it needed it too. The movie falls into the category 'hella long' and with the different story lines, sometimes difficult to understand accents and philosophic punch it feels even longer.

With it being based on a book (which I didn't read) that has 6 separate stories with a specific order, this could not have been translated to the big screen without changing the structure of the stories. So it got chopped into many different smaller pieces and throughout the movie the viewer jumps from one story to another.
It makes for a more proper build up, but it unfortunately also created a big mess that must've been hard to follow for at least a part of the viewers. You can see even the actors having some difficulty with it at times.

It is obvious right from the start that this movie is aiming for a more intellectual public and wants to deliver a wide spectrum of ideas and views. It tries its very best, and succeeds in a multitude of ways, but never grasps the feeling of completion. As much as it brings out a message of everything is connected, the script might have needed a few more rewrites to make it more interconnected itself.

You could argue it is either too long with no strong red line, or too short to succeed in making the connection between stories and between audience and characters. There are the obvious crossovers; like a flashback to a previous story in time and the recurring actors, plus some (broad) recurring themes. But besides that it doesn't link the stories together well enough.

There are many great actors in many different roles they handle quite well. I was especially surprised by Hugh Grant as an oil company executive. Hugo Weaving is, unfortunately, type-casted as the villain in every storyline. He does a great job of course, but with such a diversity of stories and settings I expected him to get a good guy out of it as well. (Besides maybe during the very last scene as an interrogator.)
Also Korean actress Bae Doo Na was a treat playing a sort of 'ghost in the shell' girl in futuristic Neo Seoul. I think something the Wachowski's had a lot of fun with.

It is an interesting and entertaining movie to watch, and I think it is best to watch it at least two or three times. But doing that would just take too much time for making it really worth your while.
There probably will be people who will absolutely love this movie completely, but it is not me. Seeing the 75% rating on trakt is about the best it gets on the internet I am fairly confident to say it isn't for the masses either.