Constantine
Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Written by: Kevin Brodbin, Frank Cappello
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou

While yet another Hollywood comic book adaptation may not be anexciting prospect to many people at the moment, Constantine seemed to me like it might have justenough originality and style to be deserving of some attention. Especiallyin these slow winter months of romantic comedies and Oscar holdovers. Ohsure, the trailers played it up to be The Matrix Re-reloaded, but puttingaside the Keanu factor for a moment, you have to admit that the visualslooked intriguing. Or at least I thought they did. But then again, what thehell do I know?

Based on the longest-running Vertigo comic series, Hellblazer, which was written inthe past by the likes of Garth Ennis, Jamie Delano, Brian Azzarello andWarren Ellis, Constantine centres around a down-and-out occult dabblernamed John Constantine. Born with the ability to see demons and wieldpowerful dark magic, he apparently passes the time by performing exorcistsand keeping demons in line. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?It seems that Constantine is trying to do good, in order to make up for amortal sin from his past that has his afterlife pre-booked in hell. To makematters worse, he is in the process of dying, drawing him closer to eternal damnation every day.In one of the coolest ironic twists ever, his gradual death has nothing atall to do with the demons and dark magic he is tangled up in — rather it is his cigarette smoking habitthat’s doing him in. How often do you see a comic book hero dying of lung cancer?

The movie bastardizes plots from a bunch of different storyarcs in the Hellblazer comics including Grant Ennis’ key series “Dangerous Habits”,and it melds them with a lot of typical comic book movie tripe that we’veseen a few too many times before. Constantine reminded me a lot ofHellboy, what with the dark anti-hero, awkward love interest, and strange occult stuff, butthen there’s elements of The Exorcistand Underworld mixed in, and a bunch ofthose overwrought thrillers that rely heavily on Christian mythology. You know, stuff likeEnd of Days, The Order, and Stigmata. Constantine is definitely heavy on the biblical references, withappearances from archangel Gabriel and Lucifer, and plenty of religious imagery throughout.This mythology is powerful stuff because even if you don’t believe in it, there’s still enough of an unconsciousseed in our culture to hook you and help suspend your disbelief. If you ask me, this is one of the reasons whymovies like The Exorcist and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness are so scary,but Constantine squanders all of this doom and gloom with its inconsistency in tone and poor acting.

Believe it or not, Keanu Reeves is not the downfall of this movie. He is certainly not very good with dramaticperformances, but in this case he needs only maintain a silent intensity and throw out the occasionalsarcastic one-liner. He knows how to limit his words andexpressions and get away with it. As far as his acting goes, I didn’t have a problem with it.The real problem is that Keanu Reeves is just not John Constantine and never will be. John Constantine is British,blonde-haired, and rough around the edges. No matter how loose his tie is, no matter how much scruff he grows,no matter how many times he flips the bird,Keanu Reeves simply does not look like a man who’s been to hell and back.They also didn’t do enough to distinguish Keanu’s look from Neo, sothere’s obviously going to be a lot of people going in hoping this is an unofficialMatrix sequel (he even has an eager sidekick running aroundlike that annoying kid in The Matrix Reloaded).

As for Keanu’s co-star, Rachel Weisz, well, I didn’t like her one bit. To be fair, it’s her characterthat I took issue with from the get go. She just seemed like a hackneyed love interest,almost a mirror image of Selma Blair’s character Liz from Hellboy. She floundered on-screenwhenever her role required any sort of internal struggle, and I simply did not buy the factthat a callous man like John Constantine could have feelings for her.

What we end up with is an unbalanced movie that can’t decide if it wants to be dead serious or cartoony andsilly. It’s part horror, part big dumb action movie, part religious thriller, and there’s just notenough effort put into any one of those areas to truly succeed.I’m so tired of defending a movie by saying the special effects are cool,but really that’s the only thing I have to fall back on. There were some pretty cool actionsequences and some interesting visuals here, no doubt. But there’s still something about themurky colours and flashy camerawork that scream out the truth that first-time director FrancisLawrence came from a music video background (specifically, he has done videos for J.Lo, Ricky Martin,Shakira, Destiny’s Child, and his big break, Will Smith’s “Black Suits Coming”).

Constantine might not have seemed so disappointing if its source material wasn’t so good to begin with.The character of John Constantine does not have anywhere near the same depth as he does in the comic book, andperhaps the big thing they were missing is his internal monologue. Sometimes entire issues were filledwith Constantine’s thoughts and personal diatribes, and this really set the mood for each story.Also, not surprisingly, the political undertones of the comic are completely non-existent.Constantine is not an embarassment to the comic like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was,but it’s a simple “style over substance” specimen that could have been a lot more than it was. — Sean

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