"Constantine" came out back in '05 and it was one of the earlier properties DC threw in Hollywood after the comic-movie-boom of '02 (X-Men doesn't count no matter how many whiney fanboys will claim otherwise). It was based on Vertigo's comic book "Hellblazer", one of the company's better titles, as I hear. I passed the movie back then, because despite looking considerably entertaining, it came with plenty of bad word-to-mouth. But a friend liked it and recommended it and far be it for me to miss the opportunity to endlessly bitch and moan in a friend's face.
Now, keep in mind that I've never read the comic book, so I'm not sure how much of what I'll say in the review corresponds to the source material as well as the movie. "Constantine" tells the story of John Constantine, a supernatural private dick of sorts. The overall setting takes heavily after Catholicism, but adds its own twist: it's a world where people aren't really responsible for their actions, instead they're little LEGO people in God's and Satan's shared sandbox. There is a deal between them to uphold a certain balance; Angels stay in Heaven, Demons stay in Hell. There are the half-breeds, which are half-human and they're there to tip the scales toward either side. Constantine is a doomed soul; a powerful psychic that killed himself when he was a teenager to silence the voices in his head. But according to the Catholic Church, as we know, suicide is an unspeakable sin, so the elevator's going down for him. Pretty soon too, since he has lung cancer. So, John does his best to banish playful demons back to Hell, as an attempt to buy his ticket to Heaven.
That's the basic premise. The plot of the movie itself deals with the basement fucking up the balance, as Satan's brat attempts to drop by our plane of existence. That involves somehow another powerful psychic in denial, Angela, who seeks Constantine's help as she tries to figure out her twin sister's death. It's a standard plot, simple A to B stuff, relatively well-executed. The writing in its entirety is somewhat problematic, though.
For starters, there is an odd lack of subtext in the screenplay. Does every comic book movie need subtext? Of course not, but there are times in the movie that it seems it attempts to have some; it's not particularly subtle about it either. Since the story tackles the very foundations of religion, you'd expect a bit more. It's obvious that the story tries to point out the faulty logic behind rigid Christianity, when Constantine who does God's work is doomed to go to hell for a semi-successful suicide over a decade ago. At the same time, it points out that what matters isn't the facts behind religion, but faith, however it comes off as a bit contradictory to the previous sentiment, especially since the movie concludes with John finding out the substance in faith and at the same time accepting that God works in mysterious ways and you should deal with it. All in all, my problem isn't the subtext per se, but rather the failed attempts at having one. The movie wants to, but whatever such attempts fall flat, like an afterthought or something that was mostly cut out to make room for explosions and whatnot.
By the way, does subtext even count as subtext when it's made clear through exposition (i.e. dialogue)? Isn't that kind of contradictory to the definition of the word?
That aside, the movie also suffers from several points that come a little too convinient just to progress the plot or carry out a scene, a number of bad one-liners ("Two-hundred-dollars shirt", Constantine says at one point his shirt gets ruined; maybe a demon hunter shouldn't buy two-hundred-dollar shirts?), a lot of out of place romantic tension between John and Angela and a tendency to kill off EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER OUTSIDE THESE TWO, before we even get used to them. In that regard, the movie feels like it has one too many things to do.
But despite all that, it's at least serviceable. The dialogues are kind of corny, but fitting and the two main characters, while underdeveloped, are interesting enough to keep your attention. The direction, on the other hand, is much less functional.
Lawrence makes the same mistake everyone else has been doing in this past decade; he mistakes overblown for scary. Most of the direction is unoriginal and even some times comes off as somewhat bland (ironic?) and then there are shots that are just.... weird. They're obviously trying to tell us something, but that something is so vague that the average viewer could use a subtitle to get it (pretentious much, Mr. Director?).
But you know what? I didn't really hate "Constantine", despite its many shortcomings. The plot is solid within its own framework, it looks good for the most part, Keanu Reeves makes a good fit for the character by playing a slightly more psychotic Neo and Rachel Weisz's work is always a pleasure to see. All in all, this is certainly a bad movie that's oddly entertaining. For your random rental to spend a quiet Saturday night, it's not the worst choice out there.
Cheers!
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