By 
KEANU REEVES’ career hasn’t followed the traditional script, fitting perhaps, for one of Hollywood’s most enigmatic and enduring leading men. After finding mainstream fame as Ted “Theodore” Logan in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure back in 1989, the actor was pilloried throughout the ’90s and beyond as something of an easy-on-the-eye himbo.
Reeves, who doesn’t seem overly preoccupied by public perceptions, did little to dispel the image and there was a time when his career teetered on the precipice of parody, the actor reduced to a ‘Woah’ meme.
But things began to change with The Matrix in 1999, a truly iconic movie that would define most actor’s careers. Indeed, the post-punk tech-terror masterpiece threatened to do just that for a time. The late aughts were something of an amusement park funhouse of varying creative choices for Reeves, who seemed like he would fade into the comfortable-enough box of beloved, if slightly weird ’90s relic.
That’s because no one, not even Reeves himself, saw John Wick coming. The era-defining epic, which straddles both ‘dad cinema’ and fanboy yearning, ushered in a new-wave in action cinema. Marrying Hong Kong-style martial arts sequences with a first-person shooter POV, the formula proved to be one that thoroughly suited Reeves, an actor who offers a bottomless well for projection, yet still manages to serve as an appealing avatar – one who specialises in taking out trash in a well-cut suit.
The Wick films became a phenomenon, so much so they’ve even spawned a spin-off: From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas, in which Reeves makes an appearance. The franchise has given Reeves’ career the kind of stamina only Tom, Brad and Leo can match among his peers, elevating him to a rare plane few would have thought possible back in the mid ’90s.
Public perceptions of him have subsequently altered, too, from ridicule to respect, with many younger fans knowing the actor only as a stylish agent of vengeance, or as the humble nondescript commuter kindly giving up his seat on a train on TikTok reels. There’s more to him than that, of course, but that’s the thing with Reeves; there’s always been more than meets the eye.
While his career has been filled with its share of hits and misses, when he hits, the ball sails out of the park. Here’s a look back at 10 of his best.
10 Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Okay, so Reeves largely butchers his English accent – “I know where the bar-stard sleeps!” – as Jonathan Harker to Winona Ryder’s Mina, in Francis Coppola’s extravagant, if overwrought vampire showcase. Looking back, it was perhaps an early indication that the less you give Reeves to do, the better he is.
9 My Own Private Idaho
This is now regarded as a landmark in queer cinema, but at the time, the stature of the two leads in terms of raw pin-up appeal meant the movie’s poster became a fixture in the dorm rooms of young female uni students across the globe. The late River Phoenix plays a narcoleptic hustler in love with Reeves’ privileged rich kid. The movie sags in the second half, both in terms of plot and under the weight of its ambition – Reeves and Phoenix bastardising The Bard was probably, in hindsight, a step too far.
8 A Scanner Darkly
Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped animation means this paranoid Philip K Dick-sourced neo-noir is aging beautifully. With his immaculate, proto-Samurai features, Reeves, who’s playing an undercover narc running surveillance on himself and his stoner flatmates, is well suited to reductive brushstrokes. The movie itself is slightly polarising – it’s either a complex if claustrophobic Russian doll puzzle, or a stylish mess.
7 Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
The movie that would shape Reeves’ public perception throughout the ’90s as a pretty, pine-brained pin-up, is great fun and watching today it’s clear just how much he and co-star, Alex Winter, are enjoying themselves. Reeves certainly threw himself into playing a dumbass, possibly succeeding too much for his own good.
6 The Devil’s Advocate
There’s an interesting juxtaposition between Reeves, who generally thrives when asked to do less, and Pacino, an all-time scenery chewer, in this ambitious supernatural thriller. The chemistry between the two is a little off but you can probably sheet most of the blame to Pacino, who, tasked with playing the devil, goes for broke, even by his standards. This leaves Reeves little to do, mostly playing a pensive straight man. Despite its obvious flaws, the movie manages to strike terror as often as it does head scratching.
5 The Gift
Perhaps Reeves’ only real turn playing a despicable character, he’s compelling as an abusive husband in Sam Raimi’s underrated, deep-creep southern gothic. It’s only a small part, but like Tom Cruise in Collateral, it makes you wonder if Reeves might have missed a trick by not leaning into the darker side of his natural mystique more often.
4 Point Break
The first of the four films likely to be mentioned in the first line of Reeves’ obituary, this unironic exercise in macho, testosterone-fuelled posturing (it’s a natural heir to Top Gun) is saved by some stupendous stunts and its thorough embrace of the mechanics of the action genre. Reeves’ Johnny Utah is po-faced and taciturn, his brow locked in a perpetual scowl that butts up delightfully against Patrick Swayze’s spiritual waffling. At best, this should have been a guilty pleasure; instead it became one of the last great action films of the late ’80s/early ’90s – a world before post-modern irony ruined everything.
3 Speed
Reeves is at his most earnest and capable as bomb-disposal agent Jack Traven in Jan De Bont’s propulsive action thriller. Indeed, his brief, according to the script doctor Joss Whedon, is to be “a polite guy trying not to get anyone killed”. Possibly the most conventional role in his entire career, Reeves is convincing as the archetypal Hollywood hero and a great foil to Sandra Bullock’s distressed everywoman theatrics.
2 John Wick
You could have picked any of the Wick films here, with aficionados perhaps lobbying for Chapter 4 and its sublime set pieces. Yet, for our money, you can’t match the simplicity and knowing stupidity of the original’s premise: Russian mobsters kill Wick’s dog; he wants revenge. Former stunt man Chad Stahelski basically transforms the action genre with stylised, superbly choreographed mayhem, a host of convincing bad guys and an adorable commitment to a cartoonish underworld rich with daffy lore. Reeves’ acting responsibilities are stripped back to the point that his body does much of the heavy lifting, yet that first-person-style aesthetic only works due to the actor’s ability to give the audience just enough to want to ride shotgun.
1 The Matrix
By the late ’90s, with the glow of Speed fading, many were ready to write Reeves off as a bankable box-office draw. Big mistake, huge. As he would do 15 or so years later with John Wick, Reeves gave critics of his acting, doubters of his appeal, not to mention the box office, a decisive digital knuckle-sandwich, with his turn as Neo, a post-punk computer nerd, who might be the unlikely saviour of the human race. Once again, Reeves leans into the rich pool of his own enigmatic nature to deliver an understated performance, allowing audiences to use him as we wish. Turns out, we quite like him as a Christ-like Messianic figure – who would have thunk it.
Related:
Tom Cruise’s 20 best films, ranked
Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman are redefining the rules of aging
