Scene of the Week: Matrix Subway Fight
The Matrix wasn’t Keanu Reeves’ first foray into amazing action. He had already been in Point Break and Speed at that point and had cut his teeth working with legendary director Francis Ford Coppola in Dracula and playing the hero in the so-so 1996 movie Chain Reaction. Whether that movie does it for you or not, he got a chance to work with a really great action director in Andrew Davis and by the time that Keanu took on the lead role of Neo in The Matrix, he had learned so much about preparing for a film of that nature that his work ethic turned him into an absolute monster!
While many of us in the industry (I’m including myself because I can) have seen Keanu morph from dramatic to comedic roles, with a few rom-coms tossed in for fun, his top 5 action movies will stand against about anyone in the history of cinema. One could easily make an argument that he should be on the Mount Rushmore of action stars! It’s good filler material for podcasters and the like. Consider it the Michael Jordan vs Lebron James argument that they have at least once a week on sports talk radio. But one thing that is not worth arguing is that Keanu Reeves has turned himself into an amazing martial artist on screen and it all started with this fantastic fight scene in a dirty old subway.
Forget about all those chumps like Channing Tatum and that puke Mark Wahlberg, Keanu is one action star that does all his own fighting, stunts, and I’m just going to assume he really did build those kickass robots in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
