I agree that Keanu Reeves is a fine actor when he stays in his limited-range lane (stoic, soft-spoken loner, reluctant hero)—and he’s smart enough to do so. Not every actor has the chops to be a broad-range chameleon who can melt into any roll like Daniel Day Lewis, Meryl Streep, or Gary Oldman.
Other successful limited-range actors include Arnold Schwarzenegger (tough-as-nails with a robotic charm), Charles Bronson (stone-faced revenge machine), Sam Worthington (generic gruff leading man), and Kristen Stewart (anxious, emo, introspective). These actors might not be chameleons, but they know their lane and ride it well.
He has his strengths and his weaknesses (same as everyone!). Where he is outstanding is fast paced, physical action scenes with precise choreography, like those in the John Wick series. Seriously, watch some of the fight scenes (ok, ok, they are basically just one big fight scene after another). The precision and timing required takes some serious talent and hard work. At this sort of thing he is superb.
No. He’s a bad actor. The roles he’s most famous for, Neo and John Wick, are roles that don’t require a lot of ability and so hide his lack of talent.
Now, I do agree that he’s a lot better than he used to be, that a ton of his movies are outstanding, and that the job requires a lot more than just acting talent. Still, I think he’s solidly in the lower half of actors, especially if you limit it to big names.
Generally when I watch a film with him, the less he says, the better it comes off. I adore the John Wick series but the man doesn’t have to say much to make his points.
That said, he’s probably one of my favorite actors because of all the things mentioned upthread. The man does his own stunts, sounds like a dream to work with, and has a very loyal fanbase because by all accounts he is a genuinely good person.
I think of him as a man who did a lot with a little talent. And that is a talent in and of itself. And has my respect.
The southern accent he tried was unnecessary, and distracting, in my opinion.
(I wrote “unnecessary” because he portrayed a lawyer from Gainesville, Florida. That’s the town where the University of Florida is located, and so attracts people from all over the state, and the country. Reeves didn’t need to adopt an accent to appear genuine for the role)
I think 95% of Neeson’s “action dad” movies are trash. Not that I’ve seen all of them, but out of 5-6 that I have only the first Taken was any good. The 3rd one does have one of the worst action scenes of all time where they have like 14 cuts to show Neeson scale a fence because he was too old to actually do it live.
I also think there’s a distinction between action stars that make the movie vs action stars that are in a great action movie. You couldn’t make Police Story with Jackie Chan or The Raid without Iko Uwais, but Liam Neeson could be changed out pretty easily. Arnie doesn’t have the stunt chops like those guys, but you can’t really replicate his presence either.
Since we largely agree I believe, I’d like to ask politely if this has come up in any of his interviews or reported talks with others in the business. Even if it hasn’t, it’s not proven wrong, of course, but it may be the most charitable evaluation of his choices. TBC, I’m not trying to pick a fight (see the prior post you quoted), just honestly curious.
And while I gave Keanu some side-eye for Dracula, that film underutilized much of it’s star-studded cast in ways I do not pretend to understand. And, well, the choices they made to “update” the story and themes never quite gelled IMHO - so there’s a lot going wrong (and right, I do own a copy despite it’s flaws) in that particular film.
I didn’t give a pass or a plus for Much Ado - most more-or-less faithful adaptations of Shakespeare’s comedies are huge challenges to actors not brought up in the tradition, so while it’s something of a failure IMO, I also tend to think that any bigger, young talent outside plopped down in such a movie outside of that acting tradition would have struggled.
Reeves is a decent dramatic actor, an excellent physical actor, but he has a terrible voice. It’s a big problem to overcome in that profession. His voice getting roughed up by age is actually helping him in this stage of his career.
IIRC, someone once griped that it was hard to film Tom Cruise performing a particular stunt, because, well, usually you’d shoot an action like that in a way that audiences have come to expect, and even accept, as some kind of natural default — which, y’know, happens to involve the camera being in a position where you wouldn’t get a good look at the stuntman’s face — and having to instead awkwardly film from a slightly weird-looking angle, to showcase that, uh, no, it’s clearly the movie star doing this.