Keanu Reeves On John Wick’s Matrix Connections

Keanu Reeves’ new action film ‘John Wick’ see him team up with several members of the ‘Matrix’ cast and crew, so it’s no surprise the film has been lauded as his best since the legendary sci-fi epic.

The ‘John Wick’ directors are Chad Stahelski and David Leitch (below). Stahelski was Reeves’ stunt man on ‘The Matrix’, and the stunt coordinator for the sequels while Leitch also did stunt work on ‘The Matrix Revolutions’.

The film also features ‘Reloaded’ alumni Daniel Bernhardt, who played Agent Johnson and Randall Duk Kim, who was the Keymaker.

Reeves told us (in the interview below) why the directors brought in so many familiar faces.

“In this movie there’s a feeling that everyone has a past, a mystery, in the world of the thieves, everyone has these connections," he said.

“When your acting with people and you have this history [from ‘The Matrix’] together there’s something there that resonates, a cohesiveness, something that’s authentic.”

Despite the Matrix connection Reeves had to learn a totally new fighting style for ‘Wick’.

“For me the new aspects where the judo and jujitsu,” he said. “I wasn’t familiar with that at all. Then I got to do some car driving in this that I haven’t done before, drifting, 180s, controlled slides whilst you’re shooting out of the window, it was like a fantasy.”

Reeves also had to adapt his fighting style to his age – unbelievably he’s now 50 year-old.

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“What you lose perhaps in spriteliness you gain in experience and efficiency,“ he said. "Certainly having the experience that I have picking up choreography, what it takes to make an action sequence successful… I have a lot more experience with that.”

Director Stahelski said Reeves was as committed as ever on set, despite his advancing years.

“He’s still like a cat to us! He is a workaholic. We’ve had to send him home. During one of the nights while filming the club fight, it was after 14 hours of gun fights and jujitsu and he was sick, he had the flu, he had a fever and he was like ‘one more take’ and we were like ‘no’, we actually had people take him downstairs and take him home.”

Reeves certainly doesn’t see his action movie days ending any time soon. We asked him if he fancied emulated Liam Neeson and doing fight scenes into his 60s.

“I hope so!” he said.  “It has to be these kind of films, that has a fresh take, or a particularly perspective, I think ‘John Wick’ is really fun – when you see it, it hasn’t been done like this, it has a freshness to it. So if I can do that when I’m a little older, yeah!”

'John Wick’ is in UK cinemas now. Watch the trailer below.