Despite the direction in which Reeves was later bound to go in his career, in hindsight, the actor got his start playing charming go-getters stuck in difficult predicaments. Be it Speed or Constantine or The Devilʼs Advocate, he has always been the quiet charmer with a chip on his shoulder, fighting against all odds for the selfless greater good.

Keanu Reeves Makes a Career-Ending Choice in the Mid-90s

Just as Keanu Reevesʼ career took off with the adrenaline-pumping action movie Speed in 1994, the actor rose to the top of the entertainment industryʼs choice of A-listers for studio execs sitting on the casting couch. With the success of the Sandra Bullock blockbuster came the choice of starring in Michael Mannʼs unforgettable 1995 film, Heat, containing all the best elements that Hollywood has to offer.

However, the noise after the premiere of Speed had Keanu Reeves running in the opposite direction, away from the clutter of Los Angeles and into the vast snow-driven landscape of Canada. There, Reeves dove into the familiar cadence of Shakespeare in his native land while, in his absence, Val Kilmer – the other in-demand A-lister – took off with the role of Chris Shiherlis in Heat.

Perhaps it was the age-old, time-worn concept of the cat-and-mouse thriller involving police and an elusive thief that threw Reeves off the scent of Michael Mann’s classic in the making. Perhaps it was his obsessive fascination with the genre of cyberpunk that made him choose Johnny Mnemonic over the ensemble crime drama.

Or, perhaps it was simply a matter of bad timing and poor luck that saddled Keanu Reeves with a 21% rated film that Hollywood couldn’t wait to forget fast enough. It didn’t matter in the least that Johnny Mnemonic looked eerily similar to what one would imagine to be a hastily written first draft of The Matrix. Or the fact that it’s a poorly edited precursor to William Gibson’s Neuromancer that is widely considered as one of the greatest headliners of the Cyberpunk era.

In the days before Johnny Mnemonic unleashed chaos among the film circles, William Gibson, a literary offspring of dystopian visionaries like Phillip K. Dick, was all praise for the lead actor of the live-action adaptation of his novel. On the other hand, Keanu Reeves, who was only a lamb to the slaughter, represented Johnny Silverhand on the big screen to the best of his abilities.

In Gibsonʼs eyes, however, Keanu Reeves could have very well been the best thing to have happened to him. Speaking of his actor, the author claimed [via Patrick A. Smith], “He really got Johnny from day one,” and “Keanu is fantastic,” an opinion that resounded very poorly with the critics and audiences alike.

In the end, Johnny Mnemonic which premiered 7 months before Heat gave Keanu Reeves enough time to gracefully accept the blunder of passing over the Michael Mann thriller for his cyberpunk movie which had no business getting adapted for the big screen, let alone cast one of Hollywoodʼs most promising actors in the lead during his peak era in the entertainment industry.