"Cats are good. Half in, half out anyway."

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2007)

People should stop bitching when their favorite comic book gets turned into a mediocre film - go home and read, then. You were the better for it in the first place. Film is a different, less autonomous, more capitulating medium. And for what it is, this is better than it might have been.
Djimon Hounsou, Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare are more than most summer pictures deserve or get, and they help raise CONSTANTINE above the company it normally would keep. But they don't do the whole job themselves. The visuals are frequently outstanding, grim in the most cartoonish sense, particularly the imagining of hell as a thermonuclear freeway. The story is just complicated enough always to be interesting, with less banal dialog and more interesting characters than your average post-'73 exorcism extravaganza. And how many Keanu Reeves leap-and-explode soundtracks include half a Dave Brubeck tune?
Francis Lawrence demonstrates a better first-feature handle of story and pace than any music video graduate since Spike Jonze. He is helped out by a script in which the hundred little details that make this kind of movie work - the demonic affinity for mirrors, entering hell by strangling a cat or riding the Sing Sing hotseat - are exotic without being stupid. Lawrence also exercises very good sense in allowing every other actor more dialog than Keanu Reeves. Mr Reeves is most cinematically valuable as a suit model, and his acting does jeopardize a scene or two in this film, but it must be said he is at his most restrained and credible for the most part.
Something about CGI makes most directors go a little crazy. Sure, it seems like a useful way to get your ideas on the screen, but the programs and processes are still evolving, and can't do everything yet. CGI can represent inanimate objects perfectly, monsters and some animals very well, but as of 2005 the human form still looked like a video game, out of sync with the rest of the landscape. The second couple of Matrix movies and the first couple of Spider-Mans graphically illustrate this among other weaknesses. CONSTANTINE stretches but rarely exceeds the limits of its technology; except for the bilious water effects in Pruitt Taylor Vince's demise, the production wisely shadows the least perfected animation to reduce necessary detail, and does what it can do with sometimes dazzling mastery.
As far as cute geek sidekicks are concerned, CONSTANTINE is stuck with two of them, three if you count the aforementioned guy who can't keep his eyes focused; Shia LaBeouf is not the worst choice for comic relief, but he sure got better between this and TRANSFORMERS.