Constantine Review
by Andy Keast (arthistoryguy AT aol DOT com)February 17th, 2005
Constantine (2005): ** out of ****
Directed by Francis Lawrence. Screenplay by Kevin Brodbin and Frank A. Cappello, based on the comic book Hellblazer by Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis. Starring Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Max Baker, Djimon Hounsou, Shia LeBeouf and Tilda Swinton.
by Andy Keast
While not as poorly-made as "The Order" or "Stigmata," "Constantine" is inevitably another excursion into the absurd genre I have dubbed 'Thrillers of the Cloth,' where Catholic ideas and imagery are used in asinine, inexplicable ways for the sake of entertaining angry teenage boys. Not offensive, mind you, because to anyone who has attended Sunday school more than once, these films must play like the Farley Brothers.
The story would make an odd companion piece to "Men in Black": angels and demons exist on earth and live among us, *a posteriori*, in human form. John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is a mortal (I think) who has been conscripted (I guess) to fight the Devil's manifestations of evil on earth (or something). And there's also this business about the spearhead that killed Jesus, and how it grants a kind of videogame invincibility to anyone who touches it. I don't know. Whether any of this is loyal to its source material --the comic series 'Hellblazer' by Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis-- I cannot say (though I've been told by fans that a faithful adaptation would earn an NC-17 for violence and gore alone). One thing "Constantine" had going for it was that it presented *some* fun ideas about the mankind's oldest battle. But that didn't last long.
Films of this ilk will create their own alien logic, and that's fine, but the script doesn't create one in the first place, making things up as it goes along. For example, why is Constantine seemingly indestructible in some scenes and lies dying in others? How does he pass through hell without dying first? Is he really mortal? The film won't say. What is the invisible force that pulls/throws characters across rooms and though windows? How did the spearhead end up in Mexico? Why does the Devil decide to attack patients at a mental hospital, causing them to attack our heroes, "Dawn of the Dead" style? Sometimes bullets will tear Satan's minions' clothes into Swiss cheese, John Woo style, other times bullets pass right through them.
Are they apparitions or are they possessed humans? With full knowledge of a human being's physical limitations, why would the Devil send a demon to possess a mortal when he could just summon a plague of insects instead?
Poor Rachel Weisz. The script doesn't give her much more beyond a hard-boiled detective investigating her sister's death, but she does what she can. Her character ultimately exists to get into trouble and then be saved time and again. She's always falling into water too, probably so her hair and clothes can be soaked all the time. The best part of the film was the wonderful Tilda Swinton as the archangel Gabriel. With only some fifteen collective minutes of screen time, she brings so much sophistication to a movie that doesn't deserve it. If there ever was a single person to lead God's army in a war against Satan, Swinton is your man.
And it's all buried alive under those boring genre staples: streetlights lose their juice, machinery runs on its own, steadicams sweep around 'saucy' nightclub-goers with eyes that glow party-bulb red like the HAL 9000 computer. Characters get to speak Old English and Latin while CGI artists swaddle them in digital swarms of locusts and plumes of black smoke --most of which (surprise) look unconvincing.
There is also a good dosage of shattered windows, splashing water, rivulets of blood, and those chthonian landscapes of hell the kids are so fond of.
Do I think this kind of thing is below me? Of course not. I loved last year's "Hellboy" --that film knew what it was about, knew what it wanted to do with its story, and did it well. Halfway through Constantine, a character says: "God is a kid with an ant farm. There is no plan." For a thirty-second review one could replace "God"
with "the production."
Andy Keast
[email protected]
16 February 2005
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
