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Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: Keanu Reeves isn't good in Bram Stoker's Dracula. His performance as Jonathan Harker is certainly the worst in his portfolio of characters named John, and is the major blemish in what's otherwise a really great horror epic. It's also, unfortunately, what immediately comes to mind when people think of the Francis Ford Coppola film.
While there are a couple of reasons for his involvement in the film and why the performance didn't work, there is one positive about his performance: it has the odd benefit of being memorable (though maybe not for the reasons the filmmakers would've preferred). This is more than can be said about most interpretations of the character of Jonathan Harker, who is, for lack of a better term....boring.
Jonathan Harker is Always Boring in 'Dracula' Adaptations
A trend that seems to run through most of the major adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel — going from the originalBela Lugosi film all the way up to Nicholas Hoult's equivalent of the character in Nosferatu — is that Jonathan Harker is a dull protagonist. It's never the fault of the actors portraying the character. Hoult especially gives a great performance (but that's not unusual, considering he's incapable of being bad in a movie).
But the problem with Harker is that he's a very dry character—and not just because of Dracula and the Brides having their way with him. He's a British gentleman and devoted to Mina, and...that's kind of it. There's not much to his character, especially compared to the aura and charisma of Dracula, so he's consistently the weakest character in any adaptation. In most cases, the side characters are more memorable, and Jonathan is just the catalyst to get the story moving. That's where Keanu has the slightest of leg-ups on the character.
If you don't know, Keanu was actually the second choice to play the character; Coppola originally wanted Johnny Depp in the role (which feels like a better choice). But the studio wanted someone with more star power, so they ruled in Keanu's favor instead. The timing wasn't great for him either; he had done multiple back-to-back projects before production started (Point Break, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, and My Own Private Idaho), and was pretty drained when they started filming.
That part's important, because while people like to make fun of his accent in the film, that doesn't always make or break a performance. Dick Van Dyke's accent is famously terrible in Mary Poppins, but he's one of the most delightful parts of the movie; there'd be hell to pay if you said he was bad in the role. Rather, Keanu's problems in the role are more complex.
Francis Ford Coppola Knew When They Filmed It
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly back in 2015, Coppola explained the circumstances of the performance and especially Keanu's accent — and none of it was lost on him at the time of filming. "We knew that it was tough for him to affect an English accent. He tried so hard," Coppola explains. "That was the problem, actually — he wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn’t as critical of him, but that’s because I like him personally so much. To this day, he’s a prince in my eyes." Keanu can give good (sometimes even great) performances, especially in movies like The Gift and the climax of The Devil's Advocate. He's even hilarious in Destination Wedding, and that's a dialogue-heavy script (co-starring Dracula alum Winona Ryder). He's not a bad actor; he's just miscast for the role, and the circumstances of the filming schedule probably didn't help.
It's obvious Keanu is doing his best and has to keep up in scenes against really great actors like Gary Oldman, Cary Elwes, and Anthony Hopkins. And that earnestness comes through because, with the addition of the bad accent, it gives him an innocent quality. Other performances of the character just paint him as self-assured and determined in his quest to kill Dracula, which can be boring and one note; his rendition, by comparison, feels appropriately out of his depth when it comes to stopping Dracula, and that vulnerability works in the movie's favor. That's where Keanu's performance almost does a complete 180. While other performances of the character have been better, but are also indistinguishable. His is at least so bad it's memorable, and the actor's innate likability still shines through.
