I think I've already written this on an earlier entry but couldn't say when so I'm most likely about to repeat myself:
Coming into this entry, I thought I'd seen my fair share of Keanu Reeves movies. He's one of my favorite people alive (actors or otherwise), and as such, I had thought I'd seen a lot of his filmography. It turns out that I've missed a lot of these, and it is seeming more and more like there's been a reason a lot of movies are new to me. Basically, almost every Keanu movie that I haven't seen falls on a spectrum that only ranges from "not good" to "please kill me."
2000's "The Watcher" definitely falls on the worse side of that spectrum.
I've been taking notes as I sit through all of these movies so that when I sit down to write these super popular posts I'll know what to actually write about and this is the first movie where I appear to have a theme. That theme?
THIS. MOVIE. SUCKS.
No, listen to me again. I'll use bigger letters:
THIS. MOVIE. REALLY. FUCKING. SUCKS.
Please be warned that spoilers will follow but if you had some future plans to sit down and watch "The Watcher" anyway, just have someone murder you right now with piano wire instead.
First, I want to share a few quick bits of trivia that I pulled from IMDB, and as I always like to mention, I take IMDB "trivia" with a gigantic grain of salt because I'm pretty sure that at least 50% of the things on there are completely fictional.
That said, and I find this completely believable - apparently the only reason Keanu Reeves was in this movie is because his friend/assistant forged his name on the contract. Then, after the movie came out, Keanu refused to do any press junkets or interviews to promote the movie. And he was the fucking star!
Think about that for a minute. I've never heard of anything like this before. Keanu hated this movie so much, that a) he was tricked (illegally) into being in the movie and b) did absolutely zero interviews to help promote a movie that HE STARRED IN.
Look, I'm sure plenty of movies stars have the self-awareness to know when they've made a steaming pile of shit movie, but even so, they still go out and promote the shit out of them because that's part of their job description as a MOVIE STAR. I mean, Jesus Christ, here's a clip of Johnny Depp on Jimmy Kimmell to promote the 2015 Movie "Mortdecai." Nobody, and I mean nobody involved in this movie thought this thing was anything short of ass. That's an industry term.
So, Keanu Reeves hated this movie so much that he basically filmed it and then pulled one of these:
So I want to just take a moment and chalk this back up to the infinite reasons that Keanu Reeves is awesome.
So..."The Watcher..."
Well, this is the first movie I've watched so far where Keanu Reeves has played "a bad guy," in this case, a serial killer named David Allen Griffin.
Wait, why does that name sound familiar?
David...
Allen...
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| A case of mistaken identity |
No, not David Allen Grier! David Allen Griffin! You know, this guy!
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| People get us mixed up ALL the time |
So Keanu is a serial killer AKA "The Watcher" (although despite all this movies flaws, I can't remember a single instance where anyone actually refers to him as this). He has recently followed his arch-nemesis FBI Agent Who Gives a Fuck, played here by James Spader, from LA to Chicago. Back in LA, Spader was apparently hot on Keanu's tail before something tragic happened which we catch glimpses of throughout the movie while Spader suffers from migraines, drug withdrawals (I think?) and a general "not wanting to be in this movie" illness.
See, "The Watcher" slowly stalks his prey, usually picking out young women who are loners and attractive, but not too attractive (Spader at one point calls the victims "Not beauty pageant contestants" or something like that at one point which is utterly hilarious). After figuring out their routine over a matter of weeks, he stalks them or breaks into their home and strangles them to death with piano wire.
Unfortunately, Keanu phoned this movie in so hard that he comes across as menacing as Hello Kitty and it is impossible to feel anything other than contempt for this entire production.
| I'm here to kill you! |
Keanu starts taking pictures of future victims and mailing them to Spader, who at one point mentions that he only checks his mail every few weeks, making him a pretty shitty nemesis to have to deal with. Generally, when your nemesis can easily be defeated by the USPS, maybe it's time to find a new foil. Just saying.
Meanwhile, James Spader is in therapy twice a week where he goes to see Dr. Seriously Who Gives a Shit, played by Marisa Tomei, who while lovely and wonderful in many other movies, is a complete waste of time and energy in this movie. I can't tell if they're on the verge of an inappropriate relationship or not because nobody is putting forth any effort in this thing, but she does happen to be the only person other than law enforcement to visit him in the hospital after he suffers some sort of medical emergency that causes him to pass out headfirst in the fridge. Go ahead, take 45 seconds to watch this. I'll wait.
We've ALL been there, buddy.
This movie really just boils down to a really basic cat and mouse "thriller" with bad performances by EVERYONE.
The final scene features Keanu Reeves dancing to a Rob Zombie song (no, not Dragula, that is used in the opening sequence) after having kidnapped Marisa Tomei and luring Spader into an abandoned warehouse for the purpose of who actually cares.
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| What I imagine Marisa Tomei's interview process looked like for this |
Fuck. This. Movie.
Some additional thoughts:
*This is one of the alternative posters for this movie that I found - I don't know about you but this looks a lot more like a certain cyberpunk movie released in 1999 than it does a very, very shitty serial killer movie that came out a year later:
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| This looks familiar.... |
*Early in the movie James Spader mentions that when The Watcher has a victim he'll violently attack her but revive her "over and over to..." and he is cut off before finishing the thought that could only have ended with a sexual assault. However, we later learn that The Watcher doesn't actually rape his victims leading me to wonder what the end of that sentence actually was. Bake her a cake? Teach her to dance? Read her bedtime stories? We will never know.
*This movie takes place in Chicago and there's a chase scene through the streets that reminded me far too much of a chase sequence in "Chain Reaction." This movie made me LONG for the days of "Chain Reaction."
*That's it. That's all my sidenotes. This movie was really fucking terrible.
Box Office Information: $29 Million Domestic, $18 Million International for a total of $47 Million Worldwide ($48 Million inflation adjusted) on a $33 Million Budget. The fact that this movie's revenue exceeded its budget is a crime against humanity. This was the 86th highest grossing movie of 2000.
Rotten Tomatoes: 10% Critic/$29% Audience. That looks about right.
IMDB: 5.3. I'm about to stop listing these, IMDB users are fucking useless.
My Movie Rating: 2.5. This. Movie. Is. So. Fucking. Bad.
Keanu Rating: 1.5. I feel like it's not really his thing to phone anything in on purpose, but it is so evident how few fucks Keanu gave about this movie. He's supposed to be this scary, menacing serial killer but he's just so smiley and goofy and stupid that it's impossible to take him seriously. And I know he CAN play that if he wants to because the next movie on this list is one I've seen before and recall him being ACTUALLY scary.
Up Next: Well I just alluded to it, it's the 2000 movie, "The Gift." I've seen this one once and recall very little of it other than Katie Holmes is topless and Keanu is kind of scary.
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