One of the most boring opinions you’re able to have in the year of our lord 2020 is thatKeanu Reevesis simply a “bad actor.” It’s an oversimplification of a complex subject, like saying Newton’s law of gravitation is bullshit because it doesn’t rhyme. Over the course of about three decades, Reeves has evolved, from charming lunkhead to unlikely action hero, down to a few low points and then rocketed back up to universally-beloved elder-statesman. But the constant through it all is the fact Reeves possesses a unique set of skills, a quiet blend of physicality, charisma, and vulnerability that lends itself to a wide array of genres but is easy for a filmmaker to bungle. Keanu Reeves is basically the Yin toNicolas Cage’s Yang; Cage is misunderstood chaos, Reeves is misunderstood stillness.
It’s been a long career for Keanu Reeves, filled with numerous peaks and valleys, but these right here are his 14 best, most vital movies. But before we jump in, I want to shout out a few films that I wouldn’t classify as “Keanu Reeves Movies” but highly recommend nonetheless.
14) The Devil’s Advocate
If the thing you remember most aboutThe Devil’s Advocateis Al Pacino, that’s understandable. Trying to pay attention to anything else next to Al Pacino’s performance in this movie is like doing a Sudoku on your iPad ten feet away from the sun. Al Pacino playing an aggressively horny Satan is the natural conclusion to the streak started inScent of a Woman, in which one of the best actors alive realized he could quite literally do whatever the fuck he wanted and no one on Earth could stop him. It’sdeliriouslyentertaining but, so isThe Devil’s Advocate,a supernatural legal thriller that takes itself ten-thousand times less seriously than you’d imagine.
Reeves is Kevin Lomax, a Florida defense attorney with an uncommonly successful win-loss ratio, who finds himself living the New York City high life after joining the law firm of one John Milton (Pacino). After Lomax’s wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron), starts having horrific visions, Kevin slowly realizes, whoops, he’s working for the actual Christian devil.
Again, the highlight is Pacino in an acting feast comprised of nothing but ham sandwiches. My dude isn’t playing to the cheap seats, he’s playing to someone ten blocks away from the theater. But the unique thing about Keanu Reeves is how often genuine compliments sound like insults, and the same is true here. What Reeves brings toThe Devil’s Advocateis a blank-slate quality, key to a character being led, blind but willing, into the ninth circle of Hell. Seduction is at the heart of this movie, and there’s a childlike naivety to the way Lomax ignores the obvious awfulness surrounding him in favor of penthouses and parties. (The term “childlike” is also very important to the truly batshit conclusion to this film.) It’s endearing in its dumbness, which isn’t a terrible way to describeThe Devil’s Advocate, overall.
13) Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
The pureness ofBill and Ted’s Excellent Adventurecannot be overstated. It’s not just good in the sense it’s a clever little sci-fi comedy with an endlessly quotable script, it’s “good” in the way a baby faun must be protected at all costs. A most bodacious breakout for Reeves andAlex Winter, the film follows slackers Bill Preston and Ted Logan, whose music will one day unite all of humanity, as long as they can pass high school history first. To ensure peace across the galaxy, an emissary from 2688, Rufus (George Carlin), gifts the duo with a time-traveling phone booth and kicks off a perilous—but highly educational!—journey through the ages.
There’s just so much to love here, from a genuinely clever handle on the rules of time travel to the fact this is, to my knowledge, the only film in which Napoleon Bonaparte rides a water slide. (Note: rewatchWaterlooto confirm.) But the most enduring quality ofBill and Tedis, uh, Bill and Ted, and the two superhumanly charming performance that brought them to life. Despite one aggressivelysign-of-the-times moment, this film is an ode to unironic man-love, especially impressive right at the tail-end of the 1980s. This is the story of two dudes who literally traverse the cosmos to remain best buds, and the fact that they love each other isn’t the joke. In a word:Excellent.
12) The Lake House
11) A Scanner Darkly
Paranoia is the name of the game inA Scanner Darkly, directorRichard Linklater’s rotoscoped mind-trip based on aPhilp K. Dicknovel. Set in a near-future in which America has lost the War on Drugs and a hallucinogenic called Substance D runs rampant, the film follows narcotics officer Bob Arctor (Reeves), who went undercover to find the drug and lost himself in the process. Adding to Arctor’s overall confusion over who the hell he even is, his off-hours must be spent inside a “scramble suit”, a surveillance-blocking ensemble that shifts between different faces and voices so rapidly that the onslaught of identities becomes no identity at all.
After 2001’sWaking Life,A Scanner Darklyis Linklater’s second experiment with rotoscoping, the process in which a film is shot digitally and then animators trace over the footage frame by frame, and in a less interesting filmmaker’s hands it could easily be a gimmick. Like, it just looks weird! But here, it’s more like every second ofA Scanner Darklyis an acid trip right on the edge of going bad. As an audience member, you loseyourcertainty of where reality meets hallucination. Long scenes go on as Arctor sits with his three drug-addicted marks—James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson)—discussing complex nonsense and all the ways the world is out to get them. It could all be bullshit or it could all be real, andA Scanner Darklyexists in a melancholy, surreal spot right in the middle.
10) Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
The general consensus seems to be thatBill & Ted’s Bogus Journeyis weaker than its predecessor, which is a wonderful illustration of how dead-ass wrong the general consensus can be. There’s so much I admire about this movie, but reason numero uno is that if someone watchedExcellent Adventurefor the first time and you gave them ten-thousand guesses to what the sequel is about, I’m not sure they’d ever land on “these characters are murdered and go to hell and it’s kind’ve a riff on anIngmar Bergmanfilm.”
Bonus Journeyfeels like the natural result ofExcellent Adventure’s surprise box office success, an endlessly creative, genuinely surreal hodgepodge of every idea writersChris MathesonandEd Solomoncouldn’t fit into the first one. The basics: In the year 2691, terrorist Chuck De Nomolos sends two evil Bill and Ted clones back in time to kill their human counterparts, sending the bodacious duo to the afterlife. After a brief interaction with Satan, Bill and Ted best literal Death (William Sadler, ironically having the time of his life) in several board games, returning to Earth to save their reputations as future humanity-saving rock gods. It’s just a blast, pure and simple, just a fully-realized version of all the first film’s potential. You get twice the Reeves and Winter, you get the villain fromDie Hard 2playing a crotchety Grim Reaper, you getPam Grierunzipping her skin-suit to reveal she wasGeorge Carlinthe whole time. The fact I’m still justifying this film’s placement in the ranking is, quite frankly, bogus.
9) John Wick: Chapter 2
One of the great cinematic joys of the 21st century is the emergence of theJohn Wickseries asthemodern-day action franchise. The excitement to see the absolute fuckery-on-horseback thatChad Stahelskiand Co. cooks up with each entry is pretty much only rivaled by the waysTom Cruisecontinues to plot his own public death for theMission: Impossiblefranchise, and theJohn Wickmovies have the benefit of a star that does not believe in the galactic dictator Xenu.John Wick: Chapter 2is a “bigger” movie than its predecessor, but the first film has a slight edge because of its potent emotional core. The second chapter largely forgets about Helen Wick (Bridget Moynahan) and sets the title character on a relatively straightforward path; John must fulfill one final blood-oath to the backstabbing crime lord Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio). Without a strong personal undercurrent, the relies mostly on spectacle.
But holy actual shit, what a spectacle it is. With Stahelski taking over as sole director and Oscar-nominated cinematographerDan Laustsen(The Shape of Water) joining the fray,John Wick: Chapter 2became a study in gorgeous, grueling violence. A ballet of bloodshed. The key to this movie is how tight the choreography is while giving off the appearance of chaos. John’s descent into the bowels of Rome’s Colosseum and subsequent escape feels like both a marathon and a sprint simultaneously, a relentless sequence that sees Reeves hitting his marks with the same efficiency of the super-assassin he’s playing. This movie stacks all-timer set-pieces together and makes it look easy. A close-quarters knife fight aboard New York’s PATH train. A shoot-out inside a hall of mirrors that turn eyelines into unending tunnels. At one point, John very casually kills a man with a pencil.John Wick: Chapter 2is one of a handful of movies where I’ve left the theater physically exhausted but eyeing the ticket booth for a possible round two.
8) The Gift
Sam Raimi’sThe Giftwas a relatively recent first-time watch for me, and the first thought I had, texted to a friend, was “Keanu Reeves should have played more awful racists!” I can’t recommend texting that sentence without context to anyone who has never seenThe Gift, but I can highly recommendThe Giftitself, a dreary supernatural thriller that goes largely unsung in the careers of its director and most of its ensemble.
Written byBilly Bob ThorntonandTom Epperson,The Giftis something of a return to paranormal roots for Raimi. After finishing theEvil Deadtrilogy withArmy of Darkness, the filmmaker flexed a few surprising muscles for a while, heading West forThe Quick and the Dead, trying out noir-crime inA Simple Plan, and batting some balls around for sports dramaFor the Love of the Game. But The Gift is surprising in its own right; there’s absolutely none of the fun Evil Dead wackiness factor here. Raimi crafts a bleak, mean Southern Gothic that’s haunted as much by mental illness and past traumas as it is anything undead. At its center isCate Blanchettas Annie Wilson, a clairvoyant who becomes vital to the murder trial of a local woman (Katie Holmes) after her visions point the blame at the abusive husband (Reeves) of a client (Hillary Swank).
The cast is across the board incredible here, especially, in a surprise to literally no one, Blanchett, as well as an absolutely gutting performance byGiovanni Ribisias a tortured abuse victim named Buddy Cole. (Plus,J.K. Simmonsas a local sheriff who is havingnoneof these psychic shenanigans.) But, again, the surprise is Reeves, whose portrayal of a domestic abuser is chilling in its realism. The public understanding of Keanu Reeves is kind’ve stuck on jovial, thanks to his introduction as chillest brahj Theodore Logan and decades-long transformation into the internet’s boyfriend. It’s easy to forget he’sreallygood at turning chill into ice and his quietness into intensity. The quiet is key toThe Gift. Donnie Barksdale is a terrifying character because you get the sense this guy would tip his hat and say “excuse me” if you bumped into him at the store.
7) Bram Stoker’s Dracula
One of the things you might have heard aboutFrancis Ford Coppola’sDraculaadaptation is that Keanu Reeves' performance is straight-up terrible and I’m here to tell you that this information is true. As fresh-faced solicitor Jonathan Harker, Reeves is locked in a one-sided fencing match with his own English accent for the entirety of the film, the lines not so much leaving his lips as they do tumble out like dishware in an earthquake. It’s disorienting, but in fairness, this entire movie is disorienting.Bram Stoker’s Draculais more fever dream than film, a study in excess that sticks in your blood because of the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it tastes. Yes, this is one of those movies where you absolutely know what it’d taste like.
Gary Oldmanhas never done more in his life than he does here as the titular bloodsucker, changing wardrobes and form by the scene but always devouring the role like a five-course meal. His sworn enemy is the again Abraham Van Helsing, played byAnthony Hopkinswho like he’s afraid they might not hear his performance on Neptune. The object of Dracula’s obscene obsession is Harker’s fiancee, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder, holding on just a bit tighter than Reeves). There’s nothing in this film that isn’t etched in the dictionary next to “lavish”. The makeup won an Oscar. The production design won an Oscar. The wardrobe looks like it was unearthed from some ungodly Transylvania tomb the day before filming. CinematographerMichael Ballhausshoots the sets like they were actually built from shadow and candle light.
And in this context, even Reeves' performance works. Jonathan Harker stepped out of reality and straight into a nightmare, a lost lamb in a labyrinth built by a mad monster. It’s still a bad performance, but one that sells the descent into darkness that is this movie. I honestly can’t recommend the experience enough. Just give yourself over to the Goth-opera of it all and the result is bliss.
6) Much Ado About Nothing
The thing that gets squashed out of Shakespeare for a lot of people by endless Sparknotes scrolls and enthusiastic English teachers is the fact a good amount of Shakespeare unequivocally fucks. Your degree in Horny Shakespeare 101 starts withKenneth Branagh’sMuch Ado About Nothing, a film that opens with roughly two dozen bare butts and maintains a sense of sunlit bawdiness and an onslaught of double entendre from there. The entire movie is bursting with imp-like glee; most of the male cast is introduced riding toward the camera on horseback just mirthfullyyelling, Branagh himself looking like he already knows in just under three decades he’s going to filmJosh Gadexploding dirt out his assfor a Disney streaming service.
The classic tale of weddings gone wrong also boasts the kind of cast you’d kill for. This is an ensemble made up of [deep breath] 20 Oscar nominations, five Oscarwins,Kate Beckinsalemaking her screen debut,Brian Blessedsimply existing as a gift to us all, and Keanu Reeves wearing an open collar so evocative it’s not safe for anyone with asthma to even look at it.Michael Keatonshows up and just does Beetlejuice again.Denzel Washington.Emma Thompson.Jesus Christ. (No, Jesus Christ is not in the cast but man, look at that list. Dude would be like sixth-billed.)
And yes, just one year removed fromBram Stoker’s Dracula, it’s certainly achoiceto saddle Reeves with the Bard’s dialogue. But casting is key, and putting Reeves in the role of the conniving Don John is the definition of playing to a performer’s strengths. So much of his on-screen appeal comes from his quiet moments, the way he carries himself in any given moment, whether he’s playing action icon, heartthrob, or Shakespearian dickhead. Don John’s first words in the film? “I am not of many words.”
5) John Wick
Reader, let me tell you a story set in 2014, a story of how I received a press e-mail from Lionsgate about a film titledJohn Wick, featuring a nondescript poster of Keanu Reeves in a suit, and how hard that e-mail bummed me out. Even the staunchest of Reeves devotees (devoReeves?) can admit that 2008-2014 run was a professional decline, and there was nothing in that e-mail, synopsis, or poster to suggest anything other than the VOD-adjacent fare that had become the norm. The moral of this story is that I’m a fucking clown, but how was I—how was the world!—to know the heights of ass-kickeryJohn Wickwould soon unleash? I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready.
Co-directed byDavid LeitchandChad Stahelski—the latter of whom was Reeves' stunt double onThe Matrixtrilogy—John Wickis an ultra-sleek revenge tale told to the tune of 10,000 bullet casings. Reeves plays the title role, a retired assassin who lives a solemn existence driving around in his vintage Mustang with his puppy, which was a final gift from his late wife, Helen (Bridget Moynahan). But when a crime lord’s dickhead son (Alfie Allen) breaks into Wick’s home and kills his dog, the former “Baba Yaga” comes out of retirement to carve a path of revenge across the criminal underground, body after body, headshot after headshot. Dog owners across the nation rejoiced.
But it’s more than the fact thatJohn Wickis a perfectly-crafted action film with bruising set pieces that put its peers to shame. It’s also more than a professional comeback for Keanu Reeves. It’s anemotionalcomeback, a role that could only be played by an action star—who changed the game more than once—at this point in his career and life, after so much time out of the spotlight, after his fair share of personal grief. The key to John Wick as an action icon isn’t just in the number of times he reloads during a shoot-out. It’s the weariness Reeves brings to the role, the feeling that this man’s zen present was shattered by the past and now there’s no going back. Those goons killed more than a dog, they cut John’s last tether to the wife who made him more human than machine. That’s why this movie wouldn’t have broken through the noise with anyone other than Reeves at the lead; as Stahelski and Leitch are building action sequences that defy comprehension, you need someone with late-era Keanu Reeves’stillnessat the center.
