©
For the 100th anniversary of Japanese whiskey maker The House of Suntory, the brand commissioned a collaboration between 52-year-old director Coppola and 58-year-old Reeves, who met Sofia in the early 90s after filming Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by her father Francis Ford Coppola.
In the Suntory commercial, we see Keanu Reeves entering a bar as Joan Jett’s “Crimson and Clover” cover is playing on vinyl. There, Reeves sits down with the locals and enjoys a whiskey, which leads to a montage of various shots and clips, including some of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. The film was set in Tokyo and featured the catchphrase “To relax, do it Suntory Time”, which the brand says helped make it a household name at the time. Reeves starred in commercials for Suntory back in the 1990s.
2003 Sofia Coppola Oscar winner and WGA favorite Lost in Translation certainly featured Suntory in one of its best scenes, with Bill Murray sitting alongside a local Japanese director. But the Coppola connection began decades ago when her father, Francis Ford Coppola, appeared in a 1980 Suntory commercial directed by one of the greatest Japanese directors of all time, Akira Kurosawa, an excerpt from which is shown in the Sofia commercial.
Earlier this year, Reeves spoke about his passion for Japanese culture and how it influenced his latest film, John Wick 4.
“Japanese anime and Japanese filmmaking was definitely something I liked and influenced,” he told Total Film in February. “And bushido is definitely the theme of our film – you know, the code of the samurai – so from the outside it seems to fit perfectly, the idea of honor and self-sacrifice. Definitely a strong Japanese influence.”
