I don’t really get why Keanu is constantly held out as the stereotypical bad actor. He may never win the Best Actor Oscar: but the history of Hollywood is full of good-looking, charismatic actors with maybe adequate acting skills. And that’s OK, because a lot of the time we want entertainment, not art.
I think the worst you can say about any of his performances is that it’s watchable. And a lot of them surpass that: Constantine. The Devil’s Advocate. The Gift (where he did a credible turn as a brutish, wife-beating redneck). Speed, for heaven’s sake.
Even in Dracula, the only really bad thing about his performance was the accent.
And look at who he gets cast against. Dennis Hopper. Gary Oldman. Anthony Hopkins. Al Pacino (who Keanu passed on Speed 2 to work with; he also took a pay cut so the studio could afford Pacino). Few are going to look great against those.
And whether or not he’s a good actor or a bad actor is, frankly, immaterial. Perry was being a dick with his “joke” however people feel about his acting.
This is probably off topic. But I liked him in Dracula. The way he played Jonathan Harker as so emotionally unavailable made it very believable that Mina would tum towards Dracula.
Anyway. On topic- it was a shitty “joke” that wasn’t necessary or fumny. Why make a “joke” in the middle of discussing the tragedy of so many talented people dying from drug abuse? Why make that joke about Keanu and in writing? I can imagine Keanu giving Perry that sad puppy look he’s so good at, the one just brimming full of sympathy with a little disappointment.
Though I guess Perry is getting attention from it. Maybe that’s why the editors let it stay in the book.
This sort of behavior is why Keanu is beloved in the industry on both sides of the camera. The guy goes out of his way to ensure his co-workers are well treated.
Emphasizing the character is a bit of an unwitting goober who just gets caught up in events. He is not really a hero like Van Helsing and the trio of Lucy’s suitors.
Is that what you call the scene where he had that encounter with Dracula’s three brides in his bedroom? “Getting caught up in events”? I’ll bet that more than one unfaithful husband has tried that line.
I sometimes get the mild urge to try writing a Dracula pastiche which goes into the Law Society’s disciplinary proceedings against Harker for all the breaches of the Code of Conduct he engages in.
Leaving aside all the breaches of the duty of confidentiality, I’m sure engaging in a conspiracy to off your client, even if he is a dodgy foreigner, has to be covered somewhere. Bringing the profession into disrepute is a nice catchall.
Of course as a very junior solicitor, he was clearly inadequately supervised so the partners at his firm also have some explaining to do.
I think a client trying to kill their lawyer through slow torture/exsanguination and abscond to with his fiancee and turn her into the undead, gives sufficient grounds to break confidentiality.
Especially given Dracula’s plan of using the British property he was purchasing through Harker as a hideout for various murders he committed and planned to commit.
I’m not so sure about that. The client can waive privilege, the solicitor can’t.
And Harker never seems to have ended his retainer.
Now granted the use of the property transaction to create a base for criminal activities, viz. assault and battery, aggravated assault, arguably murder *, all contrary to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, might be thought to entitle (or even require) the solicitor to make a report to the proper authorities but this is of course set well before the modern anti-money-laundering legislation.
The solicitor of Dracula’s day is under no obligation to report such suspicions and arguably is not allowed to do so if he gains the knowledge in the course of his retainer.
I suppose we can accept that Harker does not learn everything in the course of acting for Mr Dracula but even so engaging in a conspiracy to commit murder (with a bunch of foreigners to boot) to murder a client, even–to stretch a point–a former client, is perhaps a bit much.
Would you want to sit next to the chap at the Law Society annual dinner? I mean really.
*. I think murder as a charge against Dracula is tricky given the “victims” all appear to have been remarkably ambulatory after the alleged crime took place.
Charges of murder vs. Harker and his co-conspirators are of course easily made out.
