It’s Keanu Reeves‘ birthday! And he’s had one hell of a career, so to mark the occasion, here are five of his overlooked, lesser-known, underrated or just some of my favorite performances. Check some of these out!
The Replacements (2000)
What may be a your stereotypical underdog sports movie (and it is) Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman and an all-round solid cast bring a lot of heart and soul to this fairly underrated football movie. It’s a simple story of where late in the season the Washington Sentinels go on strike and the owner has to bring in legendary coach Jimmy McGinty to recruit a team of replacement players in exactly one week. Enter Shane Falco (Reeves) and his merry band of misfits. The team pulls it together for the second chance they never thought they would get. I like to think of this as what happens after Johnny Utah leaves the FBI in Point Break.
Constantine (2005)
Based on the DC/Vertigo Hellblazer comics. Reeves stars as John Constantine, a suicide survivor and demon hunter. While helping policewoman Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) investigate her identical twin’s apparent suicide, Constantine is caught up in a supernatural plot involving both demonic and angelic forces. Knowing that he’s got a one-way ticket back to hell when he dies, he does all he can to earn enough goodwill to get back in God’s good graces. Even though it is an early 2000s comic book movie, it’s still a damn good one.
The Lake House (2006) 
This fantasy romance film really surprised me. It’s puts a really interesting twist on things that I really wasn’t expecting. The story centers on an architect (Reeves) and a doctor (Sandra Bullock) who meet via letters left in the mailbox at the lake house. The twist is they have both lived in that lake house at separate points in time, one in 2004 and the other in 2006. Over the natural course of time they carry on correspondence over two years, remaining separated by their original difference of two years. Will they ever meet? You’ll have to watch and find out. Hollywood remake of the acclaimed South Korean film `Siworae’. Which I haven’t seen.
Hardball (2001)
In another sports movie, Conor O’Neill (Reeves) is a ticket scalper and gambler who secretly bets $6,000 on his dead father’s account. Now severely in debt with two bookies he needs to find a way to repay the debts. On the recommendation of a corporate friend he is told that he must coach a little league baseball team of troubled African-American fifth grade kids from Chicago’s housing projects in exchange for $500 each week, for ten weeks. It’s a heartfelt story of how he becomes attached to the kids who are all in need of guidance. keep an eye out for a young Michael B. Jordan too. A friend of mine worked on this film too!
Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020)
29 years in the making and probably not one that most people though needed to be made, Bill and Ted Face the Music is a great return to one of Reeves’ earliest and semi-iconic characters. The movie has a lot of heart and does a fantastic job of updating the characters in modern times while keeping them in line with their former selves. I just watched this one yesterday and I really had a good time with it. Within the first say five minutes, the gang is at a wedding which had me laughing pretty hard. Otherwise I’m not going to say much and let you see it for yourselves. Overall it’s worth the 90 minutes and dare I say it … it may be the best of the three.
What are some of your favorite films to feature birthday boy Keanu Reeves?
