24 Hours of Movies: Keanu

by Patrick Bromley

A day and night with one of my all-time favorite actors.

I have loved Keanu Reeves since the first time I saw him in a movie at 11 years old. He was one of the first actors I can really remember responding to in such a way that made me want to track down and see all of his other work -- smaller, early movies like River's Edge and Permanent Record that I was probably way too young to be watching. He gets great press as a human and mostly bad press as an actor, with critics leaning on lazy, decades-old stereotypes of his performances to dismiss someone I truly feel is a singular and special screen presence. To prove me right, his career has survived for 40 years. He has been one of my favorite actors during all four decades and I can't wait to devote 24 hours to watching his movies.

10 am - Youngblood (1986, dir. Peter Markle)

We'll start things off with Keanu's first movie, a hockey drama meant to capitalize on Rob Lowe's handsome stardom as the titular Dean Youngblood but which winds up being stolen from him by co-stars Patrick Swayze, Cynthia Gibb, and Keanu Reeves in what is I believe a two-scene role as a young member of the team. He's doing a French Canadian accent and everything. There's barely a sports movie cliche this movie won't touch, but it will go down easily first thing.

Noon - Speed (1994, dir. Jan de Bont)

Like in the making of a good mixtape, it's important to ramp things up with our second feature. This is one of Keanu's very best -- the movie that bought him the back half of his 1990s until The Matrix was released. He's Jack Traven, the cop who boards a bus to stop it from slowing down and killing everyone on board after a mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) plants an explosive aboard. This is spectacular Hollywood filmmaking and maybe the best action movie this side of the original Die Hard, with Keanu functioning perfectly as a man of few words and a whole lot of action.

2:30 pm - The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988, dir. Ron Nyswaner)

An early Keanu sleeper featuring one of his very worst onscreen haircuts (the other is Parenthood). He plays the eccentric son of a frustrated miner (Fred Ward, perfectly weaponized) who also happens to be in love with an older woman (Amy Madigan). This is the kind of comedy-drama that rarely gets made anymore, one in which Not Much Happens but is instead entirely character-based. Keanu shines in an early starring role playing the sort of charming space cadet in which he specialized at the start of his career. The movie is just ok, but I like the idea of trying to play some lesser-known also-rans alongside the Big Guns for our marathon.

4 pm - The Gift (2000, dir. Sam Raimi)

After three movies, it's time for some Dark Keanu. He's surprisingly good as Donnie Barksdale, abusive redneck husband and chief murder suspect in director Sam Raimi's Southern Gothic supernatural thriller. This comes from that late '90s/early 2000s period in which Raimi was trying to stretch himself and make different kinds of movies. This one isn't as good as A Simple Plan despite coming from the same writers, but it is better than its reputation would suggest (Giovanni Ribisi performance aside). The cast is wall to wall heavy hitters (Giovanni Ribisi performance aside) and the atmosphere is great even when the story sometimes lays it on a little thick. Then again, Sam Raimi has never been a very subtle filmmaker.

6 pm - Street Kings (2008, dir. David Ayer)

Another Dark Keanu, but here he's playing a dark character who's at least trying to do the right thing. He's a dirty cop on a squad of dirty cops who uncovers that some cops are dirtier than him and tries to serve some justice. This is directed but not written by David Ayer, because dirty cops in Los Angeles. He didn't write it, though; the script is from James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer (lobster and Skittles). This is a really underrated thriller that Keanu only could have made between the Matrix trilogy and the John Wick franchise because he could take weird chances and mid-budget cop movies like this still existed. It's Den of Thieves before Den of Thieves.

8 pm - Point Break (1991, dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

Primetime Pizza goes to one of Keanu's best and a reminder that he's starred in like four of the 10 best American action movies of all time. I love his performance as Johnny Utah, an FBI agent on the trail of some bank robbing surfers, and the relationship he develops with head surfer Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Keanu was still a bit of a blank at this point and director Kathryn Bigelow perfectly understood that he was a vessel looking to be filled -- he thinks he'll find it through law enforcement but finds it through extreme sports and spirituality. Point Break is a movie pretending to be dumb but actually very smart, made by intelligent and skillful people. How I love it.

10:15 pm - Knock Knock (2015, dir. Eli Roth)

It's getting late and we're getting tired, so our movies need to start getting darker and weirder. Eli Roth's horny remake of the already-horny Death Game fits the bill. Keanu plays a rare family man who's tested when a pair of women (Ana de Armas and Lorenza Izzo) show up on his doorstep determined to totally fuck up his life. This is a weird one in that a lot of it does work -- Keanu is great and Izzo steals the movie -- but it's all made grosser by the Eli Roth of it all. For the record, Izzo over de Armas twice on Saturday.

Midnight - Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

It's horror time! Keanu hasn't made many horror movies outside of this insane and overcranked fever dream from Francis Ford Coppola. Reeves got the worst reviews of the movie and the worst reviews of his career for his portrayal of Jonathan Harker, but they were mean and kind of unwarranted. His English accent is shaky, I'll concede, but his innate innocence and decency shine through. The inconsistencies in his performance can be forgiven by the fact that everyone in the cast is acting in a different movie. Also, it's weird how much Gary Oldman's Dracula keeps talking about how much he loves standard def DVDs.

2:30 am - A Scanner Darkly (2006, dir. Richard Linklater)

There's no better time to watch Richard Linklater's adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly than 2:30 am. The wild rotoscope animation visuals and trippy narrative can just wash over us. One of my favorite movies of 2006 and arguably Linklater's most underrated effort features Keanu's second pairing with possible wife Winona Ryder; the cast also includes Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., and Rory Cochrane. As usual, Keanu is very good as a guy trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Spare me your punchlines.

4:30 am - The Night Before (1988, dir. Thom Eberhardt)

I love the idea of playing a One Crazy Night comedy as we survive One Crazy Night. A really funny pre-fame comedy features Keanu as a sweet dork who gets Lori Loughlin to go prom with him but then gets all messed up and loses her to a pimp; the rest of the movie (which, in true Eberhardt fashion, never actually shows us the prom) consists of his efforts to find her and get her back. It's basically The Odyssey. Yes, there is a good deal of 1980s grossness that hasn't dated well, but Keanu is so funny and director Eberhardt so insistent on upending every convention of the then-popular teen comedy that this winds up being something special.

6 am - John Wick Chapter 2 (2017, dir. Chad Stahelski)

I don't want to program a whole Keanu marathon without at least one John Wick movie, especially because at this point in the marathon it's becoming clear that there won't be any Matrix movies (gotta save something for the inevitable follow-up marathon). I haven't revisited the franchise in a couple of years, but my memory is that Chapter 2 is my favorite of a series with no bad entries. It's got the cool hall of mirrors finale and expands on the mythology just enough without becoming totally silly. Plus it will be cool to wake up watching all the people getting shot in the head.

8 am - Destination Wedding (2018, dir. Victor Levin)

One of the things I want to be able to do with this marathon is show different sides of Keanu, and he rarely gets to do this kind of dialogue-driven movie or play the lead of a romantic comedy. Plus it pairs him with Winona Ryder again and those two have the ability to bring out the best in one another. This one feels largely forgotten, which is a shame because it's incredibly charming while still maintaining its acid edge.

9:30 am - Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991, dir. Peter Hewitt)

I want to end with this one not just because it's the best of the Bill & Ted movies and because it represents Keanu's amazing 1991 summer (this and Point Break were released weeks apart) but because the only thing better than watching 24 straight hours of Keanu Reeves movies would be ending our Keanu marathon with the utopian montage and "God Gave Rock 'n Roll II You" by KISS.