Constantine provides plenty of slick action-horror entertainment and Keanu Reeves as a scowling occult detective, yet a little more grit to its polished visuals and less over convoluted plotting would have been a godsend.
The Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) directed Constantine was released during a time when the comic-book movie hadn’t quite reached its potential as a consistent cinematic product. Much of the blame is on movie studios that often could not tap into the spirit and/or aesthetic of their source material.
Constantine is a case in point. Based on the cult DC comic book title ‘Hellblazer’, the character of John Constantine is a scruffy blonde-haired Brit whose supernatural adventures take place in the rain-soaked streets of London, England. This Warner Bros. adaptation takes a 180-degree approach with Keanu Reeves playing the lead (thankfully without an English accent) and Los Angeles the battleground for the forces of Heaven and Hell to playout their eternal war.
While purists will cringe at such blatant Hollywood-fication, Constantine proves to be a fun action-horror-noir that takes its themes seriously and delivers rich production values, while providing an interesting alternative to the usual comic-book/superhero movie fare that would become a cinema mainstay.
Constantine begins with our antihero John Constantine (Reeves) exorcising a demon from a young girl in a scene where Lawrence’s knack for slick (perhaps too slick?) approach to visual effects filmmaking gets its first chance to shine. We quickly learn that Constantine is an occult detective and exorcist whose past sins has seen his soul damned to Hell, a sentence he hopes to reverse by sending Earth-dwelling demons back to their fiery-pit.
Constantine soon finds himself embroiled in a case involving police detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) – who is mourning the mysterious death of her twin sister – and a conspiracy to conjure the antichrist to Earth.
Something of a theological-noir, the worldbuilding of Constantine – in which angels, demons, and all matter of supernatural creature work within the shadow world of Los Angeles – provides several highly entertaining action set pieces in which Reeves’ chain-smoking and perpetually pissed antihero rumbles with evil manifest.
Reeves – who during this time was struggling to find his next action franchise – delivers solid work as the title character, as does Rachel Wesiz as the police detective whose fact-driven profession constantly collides with a procession of supernatural baddies wreaking havoc in her city. It is the films supporting characters – played by the likes of Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou, and an infectiously funny Shia LaBeouf – who often steal the show, though.
What doesn’t work in Constantine is the plot, with screenwriters Kevin Brodbin (The Glimmer Man) and Frank A. Cappello (He Was a Quiet Man) delivering a script overstuffed with exposition and too many storylines that Lawrence can’t quite turn into a comprehensive whole.
Lawrence combats this with a smattering of fine action-horror spectacle that, although a tad-too CGI polished (a depiction of Hell looks more like an apocalyptic video game) results in a fun and entertaining comic-book movie.
