A solid genre picture for a mainstream audience

Rating: 6/10 (23 March 2005)

CONSTANTINE (2005) Dir. Francis Lawrence 'Hell wants him. Heaven won't take him. Earth needs him.' Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weiz, Djimon Honsou, Tilda Swinton, Shia La Beouf.
In a world, split into three parallel universes; heaven, hell and earth, John Constantine (Reeves) is a bad-ass, chain smoking, exorcist ridding the world of half-breeds (half human, half angel or demon) in order to assure safe passage into heaven.
There is no denying that like much of Hollywood's recent output, the film is a visual feast, including mouth-watering set-pieces involving Constantines trip to hell and numerous face-offs with a wide range of strange and interesting creatures. Reeves goes about the film without ever moving out of second gear in a performance suggesting he has the emotional range of a pea. Weiz is steady and assured but never sparkling as the sister of a suicide victim, unsure of whether she is in hell or not.
The plot, while interesting gets too tangled up in itself over the 122 minutes, heaping complication on complication as Constantine and Detective Dodson (Weiz) help prevent the world from falling into the hands of an exceedingly camp devil (Peter Stormare). Certain points are not concluded such as the apparent disappearance of the devil's son and the fact that the devil has brown sticky tar on his feet.
Though, the script could do with some work to flesh out the paper-thin characters, the premise is intriguing enough, helped by dazzling visuals and Keanu's star-power, to give a genre picture a chance with a mainstream audience.
VERDICT: 3/5