A Detective Story
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A Detective Story is an animated short film, part of The Animatrix series, set in the universe of The Matrix series. Traditional animation is blended with grainy photographic backgrounds to produce a very distinctive style.
Plot synopsis
It opens with Ash on a train pointing a revolver at unknown enemies before muttering "A case to end all cases"...
A film noir style film in black-and-white, set in an unnamed city in some manner of alternate history, it follows the story of a down-on-his-luck private detective who receives an anonymous phone call (possibly Agent Smith) to search for a hacker that goes by the alias "Trinity". It is also possible that this story is an earlier attempt to find The One. The aesthetic of the piece is highly Art Deco and thirties-retro, with the computers blended with typewriters to give it an old-fashioned yet modern feel (compare Terry Gilliam's Brazil), and the phones using a rotary-dial system. The private detective Ash traces down the hacker Trinity learning that other detectives have failed in the same task before him, one had committed suicide, one had gone missing, and one has gone insane.
Eventually Ash finds Trinity after deducing that he should communicate using phrases and facts from Lewis Carroll's Alice books. She proposes a meeting, and he successfully finds the location. At the meeting she removes a "bug" from his eye, planted by agents earlier in one of his "eye exam dreams." Agents appear and attempt to apprehend Trinity, which leads to a shootout between the Agents and Ash and Trinity. While trying to escape the train an agent attempts to take Ash's body, forcing Trinity to shoot him in order to prevent the agent from appearing and taking over his body. While Ash is wounded, he and Trinity bid their farewells with no hard feelings. Trinity escapes telling Ash that she thinks he could have handled the truth. Agents enter the car to find Ash, who points his gun at them while looking in the other direction and lighting a cigarette. The Agents turn to Ash who, even though he is armed, will likely die. With this apparent no-win situation, the movie ends with Ash's line "A case to end all cases." and his lighter flame going out.
