‘Constantine’

This film boasts some spectacular and horrifying special effects, but once you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen most of the best parts.

By: Bob Brown

Keanu Reeves (left) helps Rachel Weisz discover the truth about her sister’s mysterious death in Constantine.

   If you come to this film expecting as much action as the trailer promises, be forewarned. You’ll have to chew through a ton of pseudo-theology to get to the meat. The Bible is getting a lot of play in films lately. It’s ironic that the movies closest to its message, like Mel Gibson’s The Passion, get the most flack. Constantine (the movie, not the first Christian emperor) is based on a comic-novel series, Hellblazer, from DC Comics/Vertigo. But the foundation is Christian theology, albeit seen in a fun-house mirror.
   Its anti-hero, John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), has literally been to hell and back. Los Angeles detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) now seeks his help in determining how her twin sister, Isabel, died. Was it the mortal sin of a suicidal leap from a hospital roof? If anyone can find the answer, it’s Constantine — he always goes by the last name — who has already tried that route himself and been clinically dead for two minutes. It was no picnic as time stood still. ("Two minutes in hell can seem like eternity," he tells her. Imagine how much more agony fills three days.) He’s back by the grace of God and modern medicine. All he wants is a chance to earn a way to heaven. But one is saved by grace, not by works, so he is caught in a theological bind. The archangel Gabriel (androgynously played by the marvelous Tilda Swinton) is a constant, mocking reminder that God makes the choices.
   Further, here on Earth is another rule: devils and angels cannot break into mortality. Their influence is felt through intermediary half-breeds — neither devils nor angels — who dwell among us in an uneasy balance. Constantine’s gift is to penetrate their mortal disguises with his psychic X-ray soul vision. His work is to send the evil ones packing. But something has gone awry. Devils are trying to break through. Constantine is troubled that this breach may upset the counterweight of good to evil in the world. Maybe Angela’s quest holds part of the key.
   The production boasts plenty of star power, much of it assembled by Academy Award-winning producer Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind). Although Nicholas Cage was originally signed to play the title role, he backed out when the original director, Tarsem Singh, couldn’t see working with Cage. The role then fell to Reeves, who was attracted by the ambiguity of Constantine and the variety in the script (including deadpan humor no less). Director Francis Lawrence, a veteran of popular music videos as so many new directors are, makes his feature-film debut, based on a screenplay written by neophytes Kevin Brodin and Frank Capello, from a story by Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis (the Hellblazer books).
   Small roles have no less heft than the main ones. Besides Swinton, who’s virtually a walk on, Peter Stormare (Fargo) does an icily wicked Satan, Djimon Hounsou (In America) plays the uptight nightclub owner Midnight, and character actor Pruitt Taylor Vince (often cast as a nervous misfit owing to his twitchy-eye nystagmus) is the bedeviled Father Hennessy.
   As the trailer promises, the film boasts some spectacular and horrifying special effects, à la The Matrix series. But once you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen most of the best. Much of the time, however, moviegoers who don’t know the comic novel will be trying to piece out who or what Constantine is, what he hopes to gain by helping Angela, and who all the people are who want either to help him or wish him back in hell.
   The plot variously ambles or rumbles along, depending on whether Constantine is visiting hell, exorcising demons or checking his pockets for cigarettes ("coffin nails" as they are anachronistically called). The only thing that smokes more than Hades is Constantine himself, who is always either finishing one or lighting up another. One of the more amusing scenes shows him stubbing out a cig in a puddle of his own blood.
   Homage is paid to James Bond in the form of Beeman (Max Baker), Constantine’s version of "Q." Beeman, who lives behind the pin-setting machines in a bowling alley, is always digging up obscure but powerful magical artifacts, like a dragon’s-breath blow torch, or a crucifixated revolving shotgun that fires spiritually devastating pellets from melted-down gold amulets. Man does not live by bread alone.
   Speaking of hell, it’s remarkable how our present age favors the Renaissance vision of the underworld. It is texturally so much richer and more vital than the minimalist or existentialist versions. You can get a lot of mileage out of hundreds of bodies writhing in sulfurous, fiery pits while they are tormented by flesh-eating demons. If we must be threatened with an intolerable afterlife for our sins, I’m not sure this wouldn’t be preferable to sharing an eternal, neon-lit waiting room of annoying souls. At least the scenery is more interesting.
Rated R. Contains violence and demonic images.