Car-Fex-Air-Bee - The Many Faces of Keanu Reeves

Partial Education Presents

Car-Fex-Air Bee - The Many Faces of Keanu Reeves

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of:

Bram Stoker's Dracula

The Devil's Advocate

Sweet November

The Day The Earth Stood Still

and

47 Ronin

After last week's reviews, a friend of mine christened me "Thumbs Down Boothman". I've been called worse, but something tells me that this week's entry is not going to help in relieving me of that moniker, as I take a look at five films that demonstrate why Keanu Reeves may have a right to the title: Most Boring Screen Presence in Film.

The 1990's weren't particularly kind to Francis Ford Coppola. They began with him exposing his daughter's acting "talents" to the world and also included him making Jack. In between those two films, he made Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's a curious entity really, as it manages to be both incredibly immersive, whilst also being strangely dull. On the plus side, for just over 2 hours, you genuinely feel as though you're in 19th century London, with the beautiful gothic setting of Transylvania infecting the city, as the Dark Lord himself descends upon them. On the flip side, the film feels overburdened with a general aura of pomposity and ill-found over confidence. This isn't helped by some pretty awful acting. Reeves gets most of the stick and, let's face it, it's deserved, with his British accent ranking somewhere around level with Dick Van Dyke's. If you've not seen it, here's a fairly perfect example: 

In all fairness, Winona Ryder's not much better, but her performance itself is at least acceptable. Reeves' performance feels like what happens when you tell a 6-year-old to put some emotion into reading out loud. Gary Oldman's Dracula WAS an excellent one, but it has dated badly (much like the film on the whole) and it now feels more like a precursor to the endless caricatures that would follow it. It's left to Anthony Hopkins then to give a great performance that still stands up today. As the now slightly mad Abraham Van Helsing, Hopkins provides the film with much of it's humour, but refuses to go overboard and embrace the exuberant, and slightly indulgent, melodrama around him. Deadpanning his way though the comedic parts means that not only are they genuinely funny, but they also allow his more serious moments to be effective. The pacing is fairly good, bar some unnecessary deliberation leading up to the grand finale, which also lacks the spectacle that the rest of the film suggests it should have had, with a general feeling of "is that it?" pervading. Bram Stoker's Dracula is solid and, as a result, slightly disappointing. Nevertheless, the film at least ends in greatness, as Annie Lennox's Love Song For A Vampire plays over the end credits; a song so good, it may even convince you that the film that came before it was better than it actually is.

THREE 

BRITISH KEANU FACES 

out of five

Putting on his best suit (not a metaphor), Reeves plays hotshot lawyer Kevin Lomax, whose perfect record in the courtroom has essentially consisted of helping some genuinely nasty people run free. This brings him to the attention of a law firm in New York, headed by Al Pacino's John Milton (bonus points if you catch the reference). Welcomed, embraced and saddled with a case that he sees as a test of just how good he is, Reeves relishes the new challenge, but events and shady characters begin to show that everything may not be A-OK. It takes a while for Reeves to realise this, but it won't take the audience very long because the film is about as subtle as a brick to the go-nads. If you don't get the end twist from Al Pacino's character name, the imagery that's every bit as restrained as the flame adorned end credits will certainly ensure that you do. Also *SPOILER!* it's the film's title! The Reeves problem is that he's just not that interesting. There's two stories going on here: Reeves' case and just what the hell (pun intended) is going on in Pacino's company. The interest level of the former lies in Reeves' hands and he's entirely unable to add even the slightest level of intrigue to it. It doesn't help that the script treats it like an absolute afterthought, practically screaming "Look! There's Al Pacino! I wonder who his character really is!" every chance it can get. Speaking of which, Pacino is scenery chewing all the way. While that would normally annoy me, it doesn't here as he's providing the film with a much-needed dose of fun. His final scenes may feel a little bit like Tony Montana on Ritalin, but at least it's memorable. Finally, the film is TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG! A wholly unnecessary length, with the final half hour being irritatingly bonkers and in desperate need of a huge trimming. The Devil's Advocate has a decent film hiding within it and is by no means a bad film. It's just so bloody exhausting.

THREE 

CHARISMATIC KEANU FACES 

out of five

There's a much-maligned trope that's thankfully dying off in cinema, known as the "magical negro". In brief, it consists of a black character coming along to assist the white characters with the problems that they're having. A particularly notable example is The Legend Of Bagger Vance, in which Will Smith helps Matt Damon play golf better. The filmmakers' belief that this is some sort of black empowerment is usually muted by the fact that the character's sole purpose is to help out those white folk over there and then disappear from whence they came. The only difference between this character and Charlize Theron's character in Sweet November is that she is instead the "magical woman", doing for feminism what Nigel Farage does for restrained modesty. Reeves plays a big-headed, arrogant advertising executive who's, let's not beat around the bush, a bit of a shit, meaning that there may as well be giant flashing arrows reading "REDEMPTION STORY!" above his head at all times. After screwing Theron out of her driving theory test, she begins to stalk him, offering him the chance to spend the entire month of November with her, promising to lead him to a better life if he agrees to do so. The entire thing is riddled with manipulative schmaltz, not helped by the fact that even when Reeves is doing something nice, he still seems like a bit of a bell-end. To Theron's credit, she's a fairly likeable presence, but the romance between the two leads is pretty irksome and many of the grand gestures are rendered laughable by painful dialogue. The only real things of note are a welcome, but all too brief, appearance from Frank Langella and the world's lightest dishwasher. Feeling far too much like a Nicholas Sparks adaptation, the best way to deal with Sweet November is to ignore it and pray for the arrival of December.

TWO 

ROMANTIC KEANU FACES 

out of five

Seven years after Sweet November, Keanu decided to ruin December as well, by giving us a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. It's another alien invasion film and this time the aliens aren't happy that humans have been destroying the environment, so the humans fight back by destroying things. If the aliens lose, they must at least feel as though they've made their point. The whole film just feels incredibly uninteresting and slightly preachy. There's nothing particularly original here (yes, it's a remake, but still...) and there's a whole load of waiting for something to happen, only for what does happen to be not particularly impressive. Every character feels like they're taken from the archives of pre-requisite sci-fi characters. Reeves is the alien with no emotion and an eternally blank stare and it turns out he can't even play that particularly well. Other revolutionary character types include Jennifer Connelly as the mother with the deceased husband, Jaden Smith as her rebellious stepchild, a load of bland army generals, a slightly gung-ho government agent and the Secretary of Defence regularly getting defensive. Director Scott Derrickson hasn't had the most brilliant of careers, but his horror efforts (Sinister, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose) have at least been slightly scary, if also slightly crap. The Day The Earth Stood Still shouldn't be scary, but it should be exciting and it never is. To call it an outright disaster isn't strictly true (there's some OKish bits at the end), but it is notable in being a perfect presentation for the dictionary definition of dull.

TWO

ALIEN KEANU FACES 

out of five

And so we come to the final film, officially the biggest box office bomb of all time. Does it deserve to be that? No. That's not to say it's good, but in a world that also contains the likes of Battleship, Grown Ups 2 and Michael Bay, 47 Ronin is a much lesser crime. It also feels as though the makers of 47 Ronin tried hard and genuinely wanted to (may have even believed that they had) made a decent film. Visually, the film is nice. The 3D's fairly throwaway, but the beasts look good and the environments are just as nice, albeit blatantly CGI. However, the story feels fairly boring, which it shouldn't as it's a brilliant story. 47 disavowed samurai seek to avenge the death of their leader after he is tricked into assaulting a court official and executed as a result. I'm not going to pretend like it's a rarity for my mind to wander astray, but this was one of the hardest experiences for me to remain interested in what was actually going on. The whole thing remains deadly serious throughout, without the slightest glimmer of hopefulness or good spirits to lighten the mood. It's based a true story, but they've thrown in some blatant fantasy there, so why not a little bit of humour too? The odd good bit does appear, with the rousing score helping to keep some excitement there, even if it's used a little too much and in some rather inappropriate places; a one-on-one fight between Reeves and Hiroyuki Sanada has the sort of music you'd expect from a Lord Of The Rings-style epic battle. As the unmarketed lead character, Sanada is actually very good, with a real feeling of sincerity to his performance that stands to make Reeves seem like he's lost the one dimension he previously had. What really saves 47 Ronin from true awfulness though is actually The Last Airbender. In some ways, 47 Ronin shows the same misguided attempts to hold both epic status and gravitas. However, in being nowhere near as awful as The Last Airbender, it actually helps to make it seem almost acceptable. Keep your expectations low and you may find things that surprise you, but even beginning to recommend this film is a difficulty.

TWO 

HALF-JAPANESE KEANU FACES 

out of five

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this review a few weeks ago and since then my quest for Full Education has led me to a Danny Dyer marathon. Keanu: all is forgiven.

Next Time (3rd July)

Taking that thumb and turning it upwards