The Animatrix EP8 - A Detective Story

Set in a dystopian future, the story follows a private detective, Ash (James Arnold Taylor), who dreamed of following the steps of hard-boiled characters Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe but is a down-on-his-luck detective. One day, he receives an anonymous phone call to search for a hacker going by the alias "Trinity" (Carrie-Anne Moss). Ash starts looking for Trinity and learns that other detectives have failed in the same task before him; one committed suicide, one went missing, and one went insane.

Eventually, Ash finds Trinity after deducing that he should communicate using phrases and facts from Lewis Carroll's . She proposes a meeting and he finds her on a passenger train. When he meets her, she removes a "bug" from his eye, planted by Agents earlier in an "eye exam," which Ash previously thought was a dream. Three Agents appear and attempt to apprehend Trinity in a shoot-out with her and Ash. While the two are trying to escape, an Agent attempts to take over Ash's body, forcing Trinity to shoot him to prevent the Agent from appearing. Ash is wounded, whereupon he and Trinity amicably bid farewell. Trinity tells Ash that she thinks he could have handled the truth as she jumps out of a window and escapes. The 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 film ends with Ash's line, "A case to end all cases," as his lighter flame goes out.