Neo is back soon in The Matrix Resurrections, and the fourth installment in the beloved sci-fi franchise is the latest entry in the “Keanu-sance.” After a surge where he starred in some of the greatest action films of the ‘90s, Keanu Reeves’s career took a dip in the early 21st Century due to a series of critical and financial bombs, but in 2014 the John Wick franchise provided Reeves with the comeback he needed.
Between returning to Neo, creating a new action hero with the John Wick franchise, and revisiting the Bill & Ted series, Reeves is best known for his most iconic franchise characters. He’s often treated as a meme or laughed off as “ironically good,” but Reeves is a much more talented actor than he’s often given credit for. Hidden between his established franchises are a series of interesting performances by Hollywood’s most unpredictable character actor.
Here are the top seven most underrated Keanu Reeves performances.
River's Edge
In the early ‘80s, Keanu was a bit of a teen heartthrob directly before Point Break established him as an action icon. Compared to the haughtier nature of the “Brat Pack,” Keanu embodied a goofy slacker persona that was more often than not the butt of a joke. Compared to his more overtly comedic roles in Parenthood and the Bill & Ted franchise, Keanu’s early role in the coming-of-age drama River’s Edge saw him in a much more sensitive role.
Keanu is still a perpetual screw-up, but he’s not aiming to be overtly loveable, and River’s Edge was a bleak contrast to the more heartwarming teen films of the era. The film centers on a group of poor Northern California teenagers who cope with the murder of their friend Jamie (Danyi Deats) when they discover they know the culprit all too well. Keanu captures isolated hopelessness within a character who has no hope for his own future.
The Night Before
Keanu showed dexterity within his early teen roles, and The Night Before was his venture into the string of trashy sex comedies that lampooned the more mature elements of the John Hughes and Cameron Crowe era. The Night Before is certainly a film with some ugly subtext behind it, and its depiction of adolescent yearning and class relations isn’t one that would hold up today. It’s Keanu’s charisma that single-handedly gives the film any merit.
Told in a strange bit of nonlinear storytelling, the film follows Keanu as the poor teenager Winston Connelly, who attempts to score a prom date with the popular, affluent Tara Mitchell (Lori Loughlin). She’s forced to date the geeky Keanu after losing a bet, and the two have a wild night in the Los Angeles midnight scene after stealing a car. Compared to the genuinely mean-spirited nature of the film, Keanu’s dorky goofiness sticks out like a sore thumb (but in a good way).
Dangerous Liaisons
If you Google any list of the “worst movie accents of all time,” Keanu’s ridiculous British accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is sure to make an appearance. He was clearly out of place within Francis Ford Coppola’s gothic romance, but it led to the unfair label that Keanu couldn’t do period pieces. Compared to Dracula where he's just out of place, Keanu's performance in Dangerous Liaisons is a brilliant piece of subversive casting that helps highlight the character's uncomfortability as he's manipulated.
Stephen Frears’s period tragicomedy follows an illicit gamble between the scheming Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont (John Malkovich) regarding the seduction of the young maidens Madame Marie de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Cécile de Volanges (Uma Thurman). Keanu has a pivotal role as Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny, a young bachelor who receives guidance on courting Cecile from Valmont. Malkovich chews the scenery through his delicate suggestions; Keanu embodies a naivete that’s easily targeted.
Much Ado About Nothing
There’s nothing subtle about Kenneth Branagh’s lavish adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and that’s completely intentional. Branagh understood the comedy that could be mined from indulging within the melodrama, and as a result the entire ensemble plays their characters in an extremely broad way. Branagh and Emma Thompson chew the scenery as Benedick and Beatrice to an absurd degree, and there’s a comic exaggeration of Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) and Heros’ (Kate Beckinsale) youthful innocence.
Keanu understood the exaggerated direction that Branagh intended to take the material, and his performance as the Don Pedro is amusingly blunt, stilted, and obviously villainous. His malicious intentions to manipulate Claudio are not subtle, but it completely works given the heightened state of the melodrama and Leonard’s cluelessness.
The Devil’s Advocate
The Devil’s Advocate is a truly strange film. While it has both the runtime (144 minutes) and budget ($57 million) of a courtroom epic, the material is trashy. Taylor Hackford’s legal thriller isn’t your typical ‘90s courtroom drama due to its shocking violence, sexual undertones, and demonic imagery, and critics and audiences alike weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Is it a horror thriller? A satire of excess? Pure schlock? Yes.
Keanu is saddled with a wonky Southern accent, but he’s perfectly loathsome as the crooked lawyer Kevin Lomax, who becomes employed by a law firm led by the literal devil (Al Pacino). Pacino is giving an all-time go for broken performance, but Keanu makes Lomax just as smarmy. It’s the rare case in which Keanu is giving the more subtle performance; compared to Satan himself, Lomax is a more human and identifiable evil.
The Gift
The Gift is not your typical Sam Raimi film. Compared to the fun, kinetic energy of the Evil Dead or Spider-Man trilogies, The Gift was a scaled back supernatural thriller. Set within a murky Georgia town, the film follows the psychic Annie (Cate Blanchett), who becomes a witness in the murder trial of her client Valerie (Hilary Swank).
Keanu plays Valerie’s abusive husband Donnie Barksdale, and it's the rare case in which he’s called upon to be completely unlikeable. Keanu weaponizes his own blunt line delivery to play a toxic male character who obviously belongs behind bars, but can’t seem to be pinned down by the court system.
The Neon Demon
In the years following the conclusion of The Matrix trilogy, Keanu’s leading man status began to dwindle before his resurgence in John Wick. What’s fascinating is that amidst his increasingly maligned star vehicles, Keanu worked in a few strange character parts in auteur genre films. The most memorable was his role as the seedy motel manager Hank in Nicholas Winding Refn’s horror film The Neon Demon.
The film follows the teenage model Jesse (Elle Fanning), who travels to Hollywood with her boyfriend to begin a career in the fashion industry. An exploration of the seedy underbelly of the City of Angels through the various figures that Jesse encounters. Refn explores the ugliness behind the vapid fashion industry, but Hank is a predator living on the outskirts.