“It’s seductive, it’s persuasive”: the “amazing” co-star Keanu Reeves called a “fucking miracle”

Posted On October 14, 2025October 14, 2025

Even though it wasn’t that long ago, the mid-2010s were a strange time in Keanu Reeves‘ career, with the actor headlining one resurgent hit among a sea of utterly forgettable dross.

If it weren’t for John Wick, would he still be as big a star as he is today? Possibly, since he’s Keanu Reeves and he’s been a star since the late 1980s, but the first instalment in what evolved into a billion-dollar action franchise was a rare bright spot in what was one of his leanest periods ever in terms of both acclaim and box office.

Generation Um…, Exposed, and 47 Ronin are three of his worst-reviewed movies, and the latter became one of the biggest bombs in history. His feature-length directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi, flopped in cinemas, as did Eli Roth’s erotic thriller, Knock Knock, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon.

Reeves was certainly taking some swings, but most of them missed. Writer and director Ana Lily Amirpour’s bonkers dystopian thriller, The Bad Batch, was among them, despite the hype surrounding it as the filmmaker’s long-awaited follow-up to the phenomenal A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

It’s a hard film to sum up in a few words, but Reeves gave it his best show anyway, even if his hyperbole didn’t quite match the end result. “I would say that it looks great, sounds great, there’s a really great story,” he offered, per IndieWire. “It’s a challenging film, an immersive film, it’s entertaining, it’s thought-provoking, it’s seductive, it’s persuasive. The music fucking kicks ass.”

He also praised his on-camera compatriots, saying, “The acting is amazing.” Jason Momoa was “killing it,” Jim Carrey’s unrecognisable cameo got a simple, “Are you kidding me?” but special praise was reserved for The Bad Batch‘s star, with the Matrix and Speed legend declaring that “Suki Waterhouse is a fucking miracle.”

It was Waterhouse’s first time taking top billing in a movie, and as far as her esteemed colleague was concerned, she knocked it out of the park. She wasn’t terrible in The Bad Batch by any stretch, and she was easily one of a muddled and disjointed picture’s strongest points, but it’s not a turn that anyone could call miraculous with a completely straight face unless you’re Keanu Reeves, apparently.

The way he described it, it sounded as though he didn’t have a fucking clue what it was supposed to be about, either. “It’s about constructs, communities, and tribes, morals, ethics, the confrontation of self,” he rambled. “Romance. Is this an Adam and Eve story?” Honestly, Keanu, not many people had a clue, but it was awfully nice to look at visually.

The last time he went off on such a tangent, trying to encapsulate what his latest movie meant, it was The Matrix, which justified the extravagant wordplay and then some. The Bad Batch isn’t in the same stratosphere as the Wachowskis’ game-changing classic, and while it definitely has its fans, Reeves’ stellar hype job was infinitely more memorable than anything that happens onscreen.

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