For Keanu Reeves and a dozen stunt men, creating the 5 1/2-minute defining scene of “The Matrix Reloaded” meant almost-daily beatings for seven brutal weeks that came with bruises, blood — and for Reeves — regular ice baths to numb the pain.

“I’ve got maybe in some of those sequences 30 moves, 25 moves,” said Reeves, whose character Neo takes on 100 copies of nemesis Agent Smith in the widely promoted scene.

Sometimes, stunt men would get slammed to the ground 20 or more times.

“And every time I said I’d like to do it again, (they) were like ‘Yeah, man, let’s go,’ ” Reeves said.

He was so impressed by their persistence that he bought each of the 12 a little gift when filming wrapped: a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

“We were all in this thing, and we were training together beforehand,” Reeves said. “I just wanted … to give a bigger thank-you to all these guys who helped me make this, I think, one of the great movie fights in the history of cinema.”

. ” There are more martial arts moves in the “Burly Brawl” alone — about 500 — than were in the entire first Matrix.

Other fights feature a samurai sword (on top of a speeding tractor-trailer), medieval weapons (on a giant staircase) and Zen-like precision (in an Oriental teahouse).