A Proof: Keanu Can Act

This blog will now attempt the impossible and prove (though sadly not by the use of algebra or geometry) that Keanu Reeves can act. I know, you’re sceptical, but hear me out. If Keanu can’t act, as nearly every film critic on the planet has gone on the record at some point to allege, then everything he does in every film should be the exact same, because he never gets into any role, right? To quote Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor, “WRONG!!!” I’m going to use the old classic ‘compare and contrast’ method to prove once and for all that Keanu Reeves can act and not only that but that he can be observed acting in the most minute character details that could be easily overlooked.

The films to be examined are Hardball (2001) and Constantine (2005). Hardball is a sappy sports drama in which our hard-living hero learns life-lessons from the ghetto kids he coaches at baseball and blah. Constantine is a highly stylised supernatural thriller loosely inspired by the comics of Alan Moore, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. In both films Keanu chain-smokes. But he chain-smokes in completely different ways in each film. Keanu’s John Constantine is a bad-ass, his soul has been marked for eternal damnation and he knows it, he’s cocky and arrogant because of what he knows about magic and demons and the terminal cancer in his lungs, he is a rake at the gates of hell to borrow one of the comics’ descriptions. Thus he lights his cigarettes in a very stylised ‘I’m too cool’ way, and smokes them slowly, enjoying the social taboo he’s breaking.

Keanu’s Conor in Hardball is a twitchy, nervy gambler, heavily in debt and facing a savage beating from at least two bookies if he doesn’t repay them an awful lot of money that he really doesn’t have and has little prospect of raising in time. He lights his cigarettes viciously fast, drags on them like he’s sucking in oxygen, and pulls them in and out of his mouth jerkily like he’s got endless caffeine causing spasms in his arms. This is not the lingering smoking of Constantine but a very character specific neurotic smoking.

Now an actor who can’t act could in no way have come up with two different ways of smoking to express his character’s feelings. Therefore people, Keanu Can Act: QED.