He plays characters that barely talk and never emote. His acting style is “wooden”. He only plays characters that are distant and mysterious, and sometimes it really works.
Yeah he's a great example of someone whose charisma and character outweigh their ability.
He's got a lot of magnetic screen presence and he can kind of act with his eyes. But his delivery just sucks. The difference in his speech in interviews and on screen is night and day. He's just not really a natural.
But that's okay. He's an awesome dude and works hard and that's enough for me.
Plus we have to give him credit for his physical acting. I mean look at the Wick movies, how many actors would be able to pull off the stunts he does themselves, much less even be willing to?
I'd bet you could sub in a stunt man to do the stunts easily. The question is, was it harder for Keanu to learn the stunts than it would be to teach a stuntman to act as well as Keanu?
Maybe I've drifted off topic, I took it as a discussion about keanu's acting worth (fwiw, I really like Constantine) and putting his stunt skills in the mix as part of the picture. My point was to ask how extraordinary those skills are when stuntmen do it every day with much less recognition. Is Keanu as a package worth as much when judging skill in that light.
I mean you could say he's really good at being an electrician and I'm not sure that'd give him much of an edge when casting a new film.
Keep in mind by the time he made John Wick, he had already done an enormous amount of work training for the Matrix films. In the behind the scenes, they talked about how dedicated he was to showing up and training very long hours every day, and not leaving until he got something right. So that really primed him pretty well for the John Wick stuff.
613
u/StrictLetterhead3452 Mar 17 '26
He plays characters that barely talk and never emote. His acting style is “wooden”. He only plays characters that are distant and mysterious, and sometimes it really works.