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Keanu Reeves has made his way through a stellar career playing nice guy, dog-loving heroes that we like to root for. From Neo in The Matrix to Jack Traven in Speed, and from John Wick to Johnny Utah in Point Break, the titular Constantine, and the legendary Ted “Theodore” Logan – one-half of the lovable thrash rockers in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. We love to love Keanu. So when he pops up in an outlier role in a movie that may have flown under your radar, we are ready to bring it to your attention. The year was 2000 and the film was a Southern Gothic offering called The Gift. It was directed by horror legend Sam Raimi, written by Billy Bob Thornton, and stars Cate Blanchett (way before she was considered an Oscar lock for every role she takes). The pedigree is there (albeit early in their careers) and the movie includes a who’s who turn of the millennium ensemble cast including Reeves, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, J.K. Simmons, Giovanni Ribisi, and Hilary Swank. At the time, that was a veritable “murderer’s row” of stars at the top of their games. But it is Reeves in particular who goes so incredibly against type in the film that it caught our attention as his career has evolved so much since then.
Keanu Reeves Plays a Misogynistic Scumbag
The Gift is by no means a groundbreaking whodunit movie, but it is memorable for several reasons. Most notable is the low-life character that one of our favorite good guys, Keanu Reeves, plays. Reeves has made up for his less-than-Shakespearean acting chops by endearing audiences with his good-natured earnestness and decency in a career that dates back more than 35 years. He has very rarely played anything but a protagonist and almost never plays a truly despicable bad guy. In The Gift as Donnie Barksdale, he is without a doubt one of the worst human beings ever captured on film. Let us count the ways that Barksdale is a complete scumbag. First, he is a wife abuser who physically and psychologically tortures his spouse, Valerie (Swank). This aspect alone would merit his lower-than-low status in the movie. But there’s also the fact that he is a blatant racist as well. Some of the verbiage used in the film at the turn of the century is a product of a bygone era and would no longer be allowed anywhere near a final cut by censors today — and rightfully so as it includes some of the most vile and hateful language in existence. Throw in the fact that he is a stalker who has no issue with threatening small children, and you’ve got a full-fledged, subhuman, and reptilian character.
Reeves Hates Cate Blanchett in ‘The Gift’ Because She’s Different
We’ve seen this story a million times. An outsider who doesn’t fit into the small-town culture is viewed as a pariah for a variety of reasons. In The Gift, Cate Blanchett plays Annabelle “Annie” Wilson, a recently widowed mother of two small boys who believes she has a special ability to see things that others can’t. Call her a psychic, a tarot card reader, or just someone with an uncommon ESP connection. Whatever the case, good ol Southern boy, Donnie Barksdale doesn’t like it and, similar to the 17th-century witch trials in Salem, thinks she is some kind of witch with satanic powers who will destroy the small-minded cultural ethos of his precious Alabama town.
But the real problem occurs when his wife, Valerie, begins to pay Annie for her premonitions and psychic advice. Donnie isn’t having any of that witchcraft tomfoolery and is hellbent on making Annie’s life. Reeves is uncharacteristically disrespectful, aggressive, and borderline murderous as the man who is going to put a stop to the truth she is sharing with Valerie. Annie is one-hundred percent correct in telling Valerie to get away from her filthy and abusive husband, and the controlling and jealous Donnie won’t ever let that happen. So much so, that he accosts Annie and Valerie in the middle of a session and assaults Annie before pulling his wife by the hair out of the house and throwing her off the porch.
A Whodunit Mystery Anchors ‘The Gift’
So at its core, The Gift is essentially a small-town Whodunit with about three or four characters to choose from. When Daddy’s rich girl Jessica King (Holmes) turns up floating in a small lake, there is no shortage of possible suspects. Among them are the intellectually and psychologically fragile handyman Buddy Cole (Ribisi), the doting and soft-spoken husband of the victim, Wayne Collins (Kinnear), and lastly lawyer David Duncan (Gary Cole), who was seen by Annie having relations with the dead young woman the night before her death. But guess who the local sheriff Pearl Johnson is eager to pin it on? You guessed it, Reeves’ Donnie Barksdale. Not just because he’s the town scofflaw and an outright horrible human being, but because the randy and promiscuous Jessica was also having an affair with him. That makes him an adulterer on top of everything else, but at this point, cheating on his wife seems like a given and little more than a feather dropped into a dumpster fire.
Reeves Needs Blanchett’s Supernatural Powers to Save Him
Annie would have every right to let Donnie Barksdale rot in prison for the turmoil and terror he has put her and her two boys through in an effort to drive her out of town, but Annie has an unusually clear moral compass. She has visions that it is someone other than the miscreant Donnie who’s responsible for Jessica’s death, and she can’t live with herself allowing a man who didn’t commit the crime (notice we won’t say innocent because he should be in jail for something) take the blame. The bearded Reeves doesn’t deserve the grace that Annie shows him as he has made her life hell for months, but she eventually uses her supernatural abilities to lead the authorities to the murderer. It doesn’t really matter who the real killer is, and we don’t want to insert spoilers when they aren’t necessary because the focus of this article is Keanu Reeves taking on the most misogynist, racist, hate-mongering asshole role he’s ever played. And if we’re being completely honest, he does it pretty damn well.
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