'Outcome' review: Keanu Reeves puts his nice guy rep on the line

Hollywood actors playing fictionalised versions of themselves isn't new. George Clooney in Jay Kelly, Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Bruce Campbell in My Name Is Bruce, Paul Giamatti in Cold Souls, Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and hell, the entire cast of This Is the End. Keanu Reeves, widely known as one of Hollywood's nicest actors, already played a fictional version of himself in Ali Wong and Randall Park's Always Be My Maybe, exaggerating his affable attributes as a disarmingly wonderful date. However, in Outcome, Reeves explores a more earnest approach to a life in Hollywood, leaning into a desperation to be seen as a good person — and to maintain that public reputation amid a turbulent private life. Directed, starring, and co-written by Jonah Hill (with Ezra Woods), the latest of Hill's Strong Baby productions, Outcome sends Reeves on an apology tour through the past, in a framework reminiscent of Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly, Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, or Neil LaBute's Some Girl(s). A star-studded affair with opulent production design, Outcome often swims on the surface of the tale it's trying to tell, while still giving sharply written con