Best Keanu Reeves movies: 10 times Keanu was awesome

Celebrating Keanu's most excellent adventures.

Best Keanu Reeves movies: 10 times Keanu was awesome
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Ah, Keanu. Never has an actor aged better than Mr Reeves (okay, maybe Paul Rudd but we’ll leave that love story for another time), as these best Keanu Reeves movies prove.

The actor, now in his 56th year, has straddled four decades of Hollywood, ping-ponging from dramatic roles to action heroics to down-right ridiculousness.

His latest movie, Bill & Ted Face The Music, is definitely in the latter camp. It is out in the US now (16 September in the UK) and it got us thinking about Keanu and his career and, well, his awesomeness.

He’s an actor that’s been accused of being wooden and one note, but who gives a damn if what he’s playing is the right note?

So, forgive us if you will, as we take a trip down memory lane and highlight 10 points in Keanu’s career where he was just simply ... brilliant.

Given he has over a hundred credits to his name, this proved rather difficult but here are the times when he proved that, when it comes to just being Keanu, there's nobody better…

Best Keanu Reeves movies

The Matrix (1999)
at Amazon

The moment he downloads the knowledge he needs to become a star fighter, simply saying: “I know kung fu,” is just superb and almost makes us forgive the god-awful sequels. Almost.
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Point Break (1991)
at Amazon

One of the most thrilling scenes takes place during a skydive where Utah and Brodhi (Swayze) have a big dick-measuring match while hurtling rather fast to the ground. Oh and there's only one parachute.
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John Wick (2015)
at Amazon

This is a perfect movie for Reeves - he shows off his deft stunt work and plays everything with enough deadpan to convince yourself that a middle aged man would go to these lengths because of the love he has for his dog.
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Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
at AmazonThe reason this list exists and one of the truly best performances by Keanu Reeves. Both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey prove that all you need is simple charm, effervescent energy and a mandate to not take yourself seriously for a movie to work.This is best summed up in Excellent Adventure with the sheer joy of watching Napoleon go to the Waterloo water park in San Dimus and when Bill & Ted beat Death at Battleships in Bogus Journey.“A hit. You have sank my battleship!” is a comedy line up there with the best.
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Constantine (2005)
at AmazonJohn Constanine in the Hellblazer comics is a blonde Liverpudlian who was based on the look of Sting. So it made sense that dark-haired Canadian Keanu Reeves would get the part for the big-screen adaptation. Snark aside, it worked. The movie wasn’t a massive success but Reeves made the character his own and despite mixed reviews at the time it’s been reassessed since, with many giving Keanu more credit than he first got. It’s no wonder, then, that he’s rumoured to be gearing up for a sequel.
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The Devil's Advocate (1997)
at AmazonAl Pacino delivers a towering performance as John Milton in The Devil’s Advocate. He’s blessed with the best lines - “Vanity is my favourite sin” - yet it’s still Keanu that mesmerises us in the movie. Yes, his Southern accent is pants but he’s great in the courtroom scenes and manages to counter Al Pacino’s I AM SHOUTING WHICH MEANS I’M ACTING persona brilliantly.
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Speed (1994)
at AmazonLet’s get this out of the way first: what an utterly stupid premise for a movie. Seriously, just think about it for a second: a bus that will blow up if it goes under 50MPH? In anywhere but cocaine-laced Hollywood, the film would be over in seconds. But it’s so enjoyable, thanks to a manic Dennis Hopper playing a manic Dennis Hopper, a superb Sandra Bullock, fresh from using the three seashells in Demolition Man, and of course, Keanu Reeves.Here he plays the calming influence of Jack Traven, a police officer who gives it his all to make sure that damn bus doesn’t slow down - which mainly means uttering things like: “I'm a cop! LAPD! There's a bomb on your bus! THERE IS A BOMB ON YOUR BUS!”This all comes to fruition when he has to get Sandra Bullock’s Annie to manoeuvre the thing so that it jumps over an unmade bridge on a disused bit of highway.The scene that follows goes a little like this: they don’t think they’ll make it, there’s absolutely no way they’ll make it, they are in the air now and they don’t think they’ll make it, there’s absolutely no way they are going to make it...They make it.
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Toy Story 4 (2019)
at Amazon

"Yes I CANada."
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A Scanner Darkly (2006)
at Amazon

We’ll have what he’s smoking, please.
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The Neon Demon (2016)
at Amazon

Yes, it’s a cameo but he’s so out of type here, his portrayal lives long in the memory. Oh and he has to fight off a mountain lion which is also pretty cool.
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Marc Chacksfield
Marc Chacksfield
Content Director

As Content Director of Shortlist, Marc likes nothing more than to compile endless lists of an evening by candlelight. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.

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