The Good, The Bad & The Badass: Keanu Reeves

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Last week we celebrated the career of Brad Pitt, an actor who spent years trying to get respect as an actor after having been known in his early days as a pretty boy. This week's subject is another former pretty boy actor who spent years building a body of work that ranks him as one of the most consistently underrated leading men of his era…

Keanu Reeves

 

There are many reasons to like Keanu Reeves, and just one of them is his movies. In addition to being full-on movie star, Reeves has proven himself time and time again to be one of the industry's nicest guys, with tons of stories showing up all over the place mentioning his low-key random acts of kindness. These stories range from him dividing up much of his MATRIX RELOADED salary among the film's crew, to paparazzi catching photos of him simply sharing a sandwich and a chat with a homeless person, or even giving up his seat on the subway to a stranger. As far as movie stars go, he seems to be one of the nicest.

What's also impressive about Reeves is how he's nurtured a strong career in front of the camera by embracing his range and strengths and churning out a series of mostly strong films while often resisting career choices that would strike most as a no-brainer, specifically his now-famous decision to turn down SPEED 2 to go tour with his band (looking at the film, it's pretty clear Keanu made the right choice).

Things have not always been rosy for Reeves. After a strong start in movies like RIVER'S EDGE, Keanu was molded into a heartthrob. Sometimes this worked beautifully, like in Kathryn Bigelow's POINT BREAK, but sometimes the results were disastrous, such as his deservedly panned performance in BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. Things gelled for Reeves around the time he did SPEED, but even then, he hard a hard time finding the right path, with many of his post follow-up films being flops like CHAIN REACTION and JOHNNY MNEMONIC.

Everything changed in 1999 with the release of THE MATRIX, a film which took audiences by storm and put him in a league of his own, with his stardom rarely fading since then, even managing to overcome flops like 47 RONIN and the ill-fated THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL remake. Why? Because Reeves is Reeves, with an appeal that's all his own anchored by his zen-like cool. He's someone you can't help but like and admire, both on-screen and off.

His Best Performance

 

I should probably choose Gus Van Sant's MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, which would be the serious connoisseur’s choice, but what can I say? I love a good popcorn movie, one of the most memorable theatrical film experiences of my life was THE MATRIX. No one expected much from this, as it seemed like another ill-fated cyberpunk movie, which was a genre that consistently fell flat throughout the nineties, with Reeves' own JOHNNY MNEMONIC being one of the worst. In the hands of the Wachowskis', THE MATRIX was something else. Younger readers won't understand how revolutionary that film seemed in '99, with it marrying the Hong Kong action film aesthetic with big-budget sci-fi in a way that's fairly commonplace now, but was anything but in the nineties. Reeves went all out in his physical training for the part, and also seemed to have had a unique understanding of the Wachowskis' atypical mix of sci-fi and philosophy, and anchored the film in way that helped it become a classic.

His Most Overrated Film

 

While Reeves has made several bad films, one of the ones most people seem to like but that I never cared for was Richard Linklater's A SCANNER DARKLY. Based on the Philip K. Dick story, this was a movie I wanted to like, but in the end came off as little more than a visual experiment (with the rotoscoped animation). It looked nice, but as a film there wasn't much too it, not that Reeves can really be blamed.

His Most Underrated Film

 

There are loads of Reeves movies that haven't gotten the love they deserve, including Sam Raimi's THE GIFT (with him being really effective in a rare bad guy part), THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, and the kind of charming THE REPLACEMENTS. But, for me his most underrated movie is BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY. A really off-the-wall sequel to BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, it was a bit of a flop back in '91, but if you look at it now it holds up much better than its more famous predecessor. There are so many classic bits in it, many of which probably went over people's heads in '91, with its pokes at Ingmar Bergman and William Sadler's scene-stealing performance as Death (“they melvined me”). Station!

His Most Memorable Scene

When I think of Reeves I either default to his foot-chase in POINT BREAK or his kung-fu battle with Laurence Fishburne in THE MATRIX. I'm giving the edge to the “I know kung-fu” scene, which, as a recall, took people by such surprise back in '99 that at the matinee suburban screening I attended on opening day, people burst into applause once it was over.

His Top-Five Films

5. (TIE) BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY/ THE GIFT
4. SPEED
3. MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (TIE) RIVER'S EDGE
2. POINT BREAK
1. THE MATRIX

Up Next

Reeves is a busy guy. In 2015, he's got the long-awaited PASSENGERS, Eli Roth's KNOCK KNOCK, and his first foray into TV with RAIN. But first, his long-awaited JOHN WICK opens this Friday, and the buzz suggests it's one of his best star vehicles in years.