Chain Reaction

Consider Keanu: airhead to badass surfer cop to Vampire hunter having his bits bitten to barechested Shakespearean rogue to cyberpunk and now back to badass. Only this time, he's a badass physicist searching for a new energy form. Way, way badass. So badass that he and fellow badass physicist Lily (Weisz) actually stumble across a badass solution to the thorny problem of hydro-energy. Soundwaves! So overwhelmingly badass is this solution that his entire laboratory is blow to smithereens in a badass explosion that levels about seven or eight blocks. Who blew up the lab and the energy source? Brian Cox or Morgan Freeman? Either or neither? If you ever become a physicist, or indeed are one, never be a badass physicist because before you know it you'll be at the epicentre of a badass explosion blowing your badass away while you escape on a badass motorcyce, pursued by badass director Andrew Davis, several badass cameramen and a large group of Badass Generated Images.

Keanu is a favourite. He may not have range but he somehow succeeds. He comes across, with his sleek face and intense stare, as oddly sincere regardless of what he does. Immensely (intensely) attractive and graceful, you have to love the man even if you don't love the movie he's in. Since all that matters in an action movie for the most part is how fast you can run, how funky you look on a motorcycle and with how much grace you can fal off the same motorcycle, Keanu pulls it off with aplomb. No gleaming hunks of Teutonic sinew for me, give me Keanu any day of the damn decade. Explosions are nice and orange, shrapnel is pointy and dangerous and Keanu is still the king of blankness and grace.

Pauline Lak