CAREER INJECTION

How Keanu Reeves is getting back in the action.

eople keep asking if I’m back,” drawls John Wick. “Yeah… I’m thinking I’m back.” On which note, that huge cheer you hear is millions of Keanu Reeves-watchers heralding his return in John Wick, the B-style thriller cold-cocking all-comers in the US. After all, Keanu hasn’t been “back” for almost a decade. His last truly convincing film was 2006’s A Scanner Darkly. Since then? “I haven’t been getting many offers from the studios,” he’s shrugged. “It sucks, but it’s just the way it is.”

The sweetness of that acceptance is just the kind of Zen-dawg philosophy we want from the man formerly known as Ted, whose Excellent Adventure established Reeves’ every-dude appeal before he became the cherished hero of rad action movies and sad memes. But it raises a question: how did Reeves’ sucks-ville descent happen?

After all, his early films proved that likeability can propel an actor beyond the limitations of range. Reeves nailed Ted so well he’s still trying to convince people that Keanu/Ted aren’t one, even though 1991 stretched him between Point Break and My Own Private Idaho, a well-oiled actioner and a heartfelt art movie linked only by his attractive sincerity and inscrutability.

PThis is Reeves’ talent: an ability to pull us into the heart of the absurd or unique through a mixture of kindly charm and Zen stillness mistaken for gormlessness. He made Speed look cool. He made debates about celluloid look accessible hosting the doc Side By Side. True, give him a period pic ( Dracula, Dangerous Liaisons) and he lacks the weight to enunciate. But could John Malkovich have pulled us into The Matrix? No: and therein lies Reeves’ USP.

Besides making the right career choices ( Man Of Tai Chi? Generation Um…?), what Reeves struggles at is grounded solemnity. The fact that he looks like a 40-year-old at 50 tells us he works best in heightened realms, which might explain the failures of Street Kings and Henry’s Crime, dirty and tired crime-pics both. Inert and didactic respectively, 47 Ronin and the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still died.

All of these were bold tries, but John Wick seems to reinforce Reeves’ youthful likeability. “Slick, propulsive and ridiculous” is how The Guardian praised his revenge thriller, qualities that could have been made for Reeves’s skillset just as Taken was for Liam Neeson. We’re thinking franchise rebirth. We’re thinking he’s back. KH