Keanu Connection

Having reached the stardom in Hollywood, it was hope that Keanu continued to follow the road of the movie action. But he always acted out of patterns, and following his heart, he committed to do a project of dreams: Hamlet, of Sheakespeare. In a small producion, in Winnipeg (Canada), directed by Lewis Baumander and with several stranger actors. The tickets was out in a few days, with fans coming from everywhere (a huge group came from Japan, surprising the press with their devotion to Keanu), turning the play a tourist attraction in the city.

Keanu as Hamlet

Critics of the whole country and from England were also to Winnipeg, to see Keanu and we can’t even imagine the pressure he suffered at that time. There was a rumour that their agents refused go to see him, fearing a public humiliation of a guy that should be in Hollywood making films and not in Canada, in a small and insignificant theater. Keanu was nervous, received a lot of bad reviews but didn’t give up. He went getting better until came to where he wanted. One of the most respected theater critics of England, Roger Lewis, said that Keanu was one of three better Hamlets then he had already seen. He said that Keanu "was Hamlet".

Keanu stays in Canada to his next movie. Sadly, unlike Point Break, Speed did not launch Reeves into a period of particularly interesting work. Indeed, it was Failure Time. First came Johnny Mnemonic, written by William “Neuromancer” Gibson, where Keanu played a courier with a hard-drive in his head, a hard-drive carrying vital information that will kill him if it’s not downloaded quickly. It was a great idea, there was a cool cast including Ice-T, Henry Rollins and Beat Takeshi, but it failed to hit midway on the Thrillometer. His next action attempt, too, wouldn’t hit the mark. In Chain Reaction, he and Rachel Weisz played researchers on a project that discovers a cheap, pollution-free fuel. Bad news for many powers-that-be. And so they find themselves framed for murder and pursued relentlessly by just about everyone.

At this stage even his indie efforts weren’t really up to scratch. The sappy romance A Walk In The Clouds saw him as an unhappily married man who decides to help a pregnant Mexican girl by pretending to be her husband. The grungey, sleazy Feeling Minnesota had him running off with his manipulative brother’s wife (Cameron Diaz) and being tailed by a private dick. Then came the Beat Generation drama The Last Time I Committed Suicide where he played Neal Cassady’s drunken, pool-playing buddy. It was all good practice, but generally half-baked stuff.

Playing bass in his band Dogstar.

After three years without a hit, many would have taken the easy option and reprised an earlier success. But, unlike Sandra Bullock, Keanu now turned down Speed 2, because he didn’t like the script. He choose to go out with his obscure band "Dogstar". This was an outfit he’d formed in 1993 with Bret Domrose and Robert Mailhouse, Keanu providing bass. They’d put out an album, Our Little Visionary, in 1996, and would release a follow-up, Happy Ending, in 2000. And this was no scrappy ego-trip, either. At one point the band would actually support Bon Jovi.

But to Hollywood, Keanu’s career was done.