Next in 2008, Reeves collaborated with director David Ayer on the crime thriller Street Kings. He played an undercover policeman who must clear his name after the death of another officer. Released on April 11, the film grossed a moderate $66 million worldwide. The film's plot and Reeves' performance, however, were met with mostly unenthusiastic reviews. Paul Byrnes of The Sydney Morning Herald stated, "It's full of twists and turns, a dead body in every reel, but it's not difficult to work out who's betraying whom, and that's just not good enough". The Guardian opined, "Reeves is fundamentally blank and uninteresting". Reeves starred in another science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, a loose adaptation of the 1951 film of the same name. He portrayed Klaatu, an alien sent from outer space to try to change human behaviour or eradicate humans because of their environmental impact. At the 2009 Razzie Awards, the film was nominated for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel. Many critics were unimpressed with the heavy use of special effects; The Telegraph credited Reeves' ability to engage the audience, but thought the cinematography was abysmal and the "sub-Al-Gore environment lecture leaves you light-headed with tedium".
Reeves starred alongside Patrick Swayze, Lori Petty and Gary Busey in the action thriller Point Break (1991), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. He plays an undercover FBI agent tasked with investigating the identities of a group of bank robbers. To prepare for the film, Reeves and his co-stars took surfing lessons with professional surfer Dennis Jarvis in Hawaii. Reeves had never surfed before. Upon its release, Point Break was generally well-received, and a commercial success, earning $83.5 million at the box office. Reeves' performance was praised by The New York Times for "considerable discipline and range", adding, "He moves easily between the buttoned-down demeanor that suits a police procedural story and the loose-jointed manner of his comic roles". Writing for The Washington Post, Hal Hinson called Reeves the "perfect choice" and praised the surfing scenes, but opined "the filmmakers have their characters make the most ludicrously illogical choices imaginable". At the 1992 MTV Movie Awards, Reeves won the Most Desirable Male award.
More InfoThe Matrix Revolutions, the third instalment, was met with mixed reception. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the consensus was that "characters and ideas take a back seat to the special effects". Paul Clinton, writing for CNN, praised the special effects but felt Reeves' character was "dazed and confused". In contrast, the San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Meyer was highly critical of the special effects, writing, "[The Wachowskis] computer-generated imagery goes from dazzling to deadening in action scenes that favor heavy, clanking weaponry over the martial-arts moves that thrilled viewers of The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded." Nevertheless, the film grossed a healthy $427 million worldwide, although less than the two previous films. Something's Gotta Give, a romantic comedy, was Reeves' last release of 2003. He co-starred with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, and played Dr. Julian Mercer in the film. Something's Gotta Give received generally favourable reviews.
More InfoFollowing Speed, Reeves' next leading role came in 1995, in the cyberpunk action thriller Johnny Mnemonic. It is based on the story of the same name by William Gibson, about a man who has had a cybernetic brain implant. As part of the film studio's marketing efforts, a CD-ROM video game was also released. The film, however, received mainly negative reviews and critics felt Reeves was "woefully miscast". He next appeared in the romantic drama A Walk in the Clouds (1995), which also garnered mixed-to-negative reviews. Reeves plays a young soldier returning home from World War II, trying to settle down with a woman he married impulsively just before he enlisted. Film critic Mick LaSalle opined, "A Walk in the Clouds is for the most part a beautiful, well-acted and emotionally rich picture", whereas Hal Hinson from The Washington Post said, "The film has the syrupy, Kodak magic-moment look of a Bo Derek movie, and pretty much the same level of substance". Besides film work, Reeves retreated briefly back to the theatre playing Prince Hamlet in a 1995 Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Hamlet in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Sunday Times critic Roger Lewis believed his performance, writing he "quite embodied the innocence, the splendid fury, the animal grace of the leaps and bounds, the emotional violence, that form the Prince of Denmark ... He is one of the top three Hamlets I have seen, for a simple reason: he is Hamlet".
More InfoIn 2005, Reeves played the titular role in Constantine, an occult detective film, about a man who has the ability to perceive and communicate with half-angels and half-demons in their true form. The film was a respectable box office hit, grossing $230 million worldwide from a $100 million budget but attracted mixed-to-positive reviews. The Sydney Morning Herald's critic noted that "Constantine isn't bad, but it doesn't deserve any imposing adjectives. It's occasionally cheesy, sometimes enjoyable, intermittently scary, and constantly spiked with celestial blatherskite". He next appeared in Thumbsucker, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. A comedy adapted from the 1999 Walter Kirn novel of the same name, the story follows a boy with a thumb-sucking problem. Reeves and the rest of the cast garnered positive critical reviews, with The Washington Post describing it as "a gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances".
More InfoReeves appeared in the Richard Linklater-directed animated science fiction thriller A Scanner Darkly, which premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Reeves played Bob Arctor/Fred, an undercover agent in a futuristic dystopia under high-tech police surveillance. Based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick, the film was a box office failure. However, the film attracted generally favourable reviews; Paul Arendt of the BBC thought the film was "beautiful to watch", but Reeves was outshone by his co-star Robert Downey Jr. His next role was Alex Wyler in The Lake House (2006), a romantic drama adaptation of the South Korean film Il Mare (2000), which reunited him with Sandra Bullock. Despite its box office success, Mark Kermode of The Guardian was highly critical, writing "this syrup-drenched supernatural whimsy achieves stupidity at a genuinely international level ... The last time Bullock and Reeves were together on screen the result was Speed. This should have been entitled Stop". Towards the end of 2006, he co-narrated The Great Warming with Alanis Morrissette, a documentary about climate change mitigation.
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