 Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia Labeouf, Djimon Hounsou, Tilda Swinton
Director: Francis Lawrence
Year Of Release: 2005
Plot: John Constantine was born with the ability to see the angels and demons who are on Earth, but invisible to normal humans. However, following a suicide attempts he’s literally been to hell and back and now his soul is damned, but attempts to save himself from eternal hell-fire by sending half-breed demons back to the underworld. After meeting Angela, who is investigating the death of her twin sister, they discover Satan’s son is trying to set up his own kingdom on Earth and Constantine must stop him. |
I have a theory, which is that Keanu Reeves was born 80 years too late, which is a bit of a bummer for him. The reason for this is that I reckon he’s one of the best actors around, until he actually speaks, so the fact they brought sound to cinema in 1927 has rather hampered his career. He has an amazing physicality and when all he’s called upon do is move, or walk, or maybe shoot a gun, he’s absolutely brilliant (and I’m not taking the piss here). The amount he can convey purely with his physical presence really is impressive, but then he screws it all up by talking.
I first came up with this theory when watching Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. In that he plays Don John, who in Shakespeare’s play doesn’t turn up until about two-thirds of the way through. However, because the makers had paid for a top star like Reeves to play the role, they thought they’d better get him to show up earlier on, but because it’s based on the Shakespeare text, he doesn’t have any lines of dialogue for the first hour or so. Instead he’s just shown walking around looking moody and menacing. And he’s excellent. Even though you know little about his character, in just a few scenes Keanu sets up who the character is purely through his physicality.
Then he’s called upon to utter a bit of iambic pentameter and the whole thing comes crashing down. From being brilliantly moody and unsettling when he had nothing to say, in the space of a couple of lines he screw everything up and it’s truly hideous. Vocally he simply can’t cut the mustard. He’s hammy and completely lacks anything but the most basic of emotions. It’s not just in Much Ado About nothing either, because in most of his films it’s great when he’s called upon to use his body to act, but when’s he got a bit of complex dialogue it’s cringe inducing. You barely get the impression he can remember the lines properly, let alone convey emotion while speaking them.
You can see why he was cast in Bill & Ted, because it’s basically just an amplified version of how he comes across in every movie. Even in My Own Private Idaho he only works because River Phoenix does much of Keanu’s acting for him, with Reeves’ character mainly conveyed by how Phoenix reacts to him. Since those early days, things really have been split into films were he mainly just has to be a physical presence (which have been a success,) and those were he has to do some talking (which have flopped). It’s why he works so well in The Matrix.
Reeves has very little dialogue as Neo, other than saying things like ‘I know Kung Fu’, with the vast majority of the film relying purely on his physicality and action prowess, while the rest of the characters deal with the philosophical musing of the film. That’s why it works, because he’s great at action and getting you to believe in his character as a physical presence, as long as he says as little as possible.
When he tries to talk, such as his attempts at rom coms like Feeling Minnesota and Sweet November, it’s hideous, because the guy is never going to convince you of anything with words. It’s kind of opposite to how people normally think of actors, where it’s considered that it’s mainly about conveying emotion through dialogue, but it just highlights how being able to move is as vital to acting as being able to speak, particularly in film. It’s why people like Arnie can be massive stars, because they know what to do physically – and film is a visual medium – even if they trip over every word they try to say.
Perhaps the worst example of Keanu Reeves being allowed to talk is Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha. It’s a movie that’s close to being brilliant, except for the utterly ridiculous casting of Keanu. While it was probably his star presence that convinced the backers to put up the money for the film, the idea of him as the spiritual master who founded Buddhism is little short of ludicrous. Let’s face it, Reeves could barely convince someone to cross the road through dialogue, let alone join him on the path to enlightenment. Other than him, Little Buddha is a truly wonderful movie.
Constantine sort of sits in the middle. Rather like Johnny Mnemonic and The Devil’s Advocate, it works well as an action film, helped enormously by the fact Reeves is superb when he’s jumping about and kicking ass. However these films also deal with some pretty big philosophical ideas, and they fall over when Keanu is charged with trying to put those across to the audience. Rather than seeming interesting, he just makes them appear incredibly stupid, largely because of the way he talks about them. For example there's some surprisingly deep stuff about man's place in the universe in Constantine, but you'd barely notice because Reeves can't put it across properly, so it gets ignored.
It’s a shame really, as he’s an actor who really wants to challenge himself and make movies that are about more than just the usual Hollywood nothingness. He wants to have great roles (he even did Hamlet in theatre in Canada, bless him) and appear in commercial movies dealing with big ideas, concerning religion, the nature of existence and humanity’s place in the cosmos, but unfortunately they brought sound to cinema in 1927 and he simply doesn’t have the chops to deal with these things if he’s got to do it with his mouth.
Like I said, he should have been born 80 years earlier, because he’d be one of silent cinema’s greats. However nowadays audiences will insist on actors talking, and as a result he’s got a problem.
Having written this, he’ll probably go on to win the Best Actor Oscar next year now, but somehow I doubt it. In fact I can’t think of any other a-list star who I can imagine ever troubling the Academy less, unless he starts seeking out roles where his character is a mute.
TIM ISAAC
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