Schizophrenic video game ad

Rating: 2/10 (23 February 2005)

First off, I admit -- I never read the comics. Regardless of that fact, a movie should be able to stand on its own. This movie, however, doesn't. I'm not even sure it has legs to do so. It tries to hard to be both a suspense thriller and an action movie, but it really succeeds at neither. The suspense thriller moments dragged on to the point that I actually fell asleep more than once, and the action scenes just screamed "BE SURE TO BUY THE GAME!", which by the way, is out already.
As far as the characters, while I understood some of their motivations for what they were doing, I never really bought into them emotionally. I got the impression that the character Constantine is intended to be an anti-hero, but I was never compelled to like or dislike him. In fact, I just plain didn't really care what happened to him. If you want a good quality anti-hero, pick up a book and check out Thomas Covenant or Elric of Melnibone. Those guys are true anti-heroes.
Definitely not the worst movie I've ever seen, but certainly not among the best. It would have scored higher if it had prompted to me to at least do a little research on some of the theological concepts involved, but...well...it didn't.