It's hard to accept that it's been 10 years since The Matrix first assaulted our senses and changed cinema forever. Watching it in 2009, the ground breaking Bullet Time and CG effects seem, ironically, the one thing that's dated the film. Otherwise it's just as incredible as it was when we first saw it. Each time Keanu says "Guns. Lots of guns", the hairs on your neck automatically stand to attention.

The Matrix is seen as an effects movie, but the trick the Wachowskis manage to pull off is to save nearly all the big stuff for the very end and get away with it. There are fewer action beats than you may remember, as loner hacker Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) gets sucked down the rabbit hole and is taught by a monotone Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne, never better) to exploit the confines of the computer generated reality he's been living in all his life: The Matrix.

It turns out the real real world is an apocalyptic hell hole where the few remaining humans live underground and travel around enormous sewer tunnels in hovercraft. As Neo is taught kung-fu by downloading files into his brain, cold fish Trinity inexplicably becomes drawn to him because of one of The Oracle's prophecies, leading her to a final reel decision to save him that is based purely on blind faith.

Do we have free will or are we all just victims of destiny? These are weighty issues that The Wachowski brothers somehow manage to cram into a film that already includes balletic John Woo gun fights, sci-fi wastelands, a femme fatale, a love story, a one-man-versus-the-system struggle, science versus religion and reality versus illusion. Phew. Did we forget anything? Oh yes: it's also one big fetish movie (what other reason is there for Trinity to do her martial arts wearing skintight PVC?).

The Wachowskis have style to spare then, but all that eye candy and genre splicing wouldn't have got them anywhere without a good story. Luckily for them, The Matrix has the closest thing to a perfect screenplay you'll ever find. It's a good 90 minutes of pure anticipation before Keanu finally gets his groove on and storms the building where Morpheus is being held. Cue the best shoot-out in any action movie ever - often copied, but never bettered.