A little too murky for its own good

Rating: 4/10 (23 February 2005)

I'm not a particularly big fan of the Hellblazer comic books; they're of that new breed of comics where everyone has to swear, smoke, drink a lot, and either be English or have English friends (thanks a lot, Moore, Ennis, and all the rest of you Brits for 'modernizing' the comics industry). That being said, I was interested in Constantine because, well, I like the stars (Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz), I like the general concept (Heaven vs. Hell), and, well, lamely, it looked neat.
Constantine is mostly concerned with its titular character (Reeves) who apparently died and came back able to see demons and fight them (this is never really made clear, you sort of have to pay attention to pick all that up). He's a pack-and-a-half a day smoker who's grim, taciturn, and takes his job very seriously. He quickly runs into Angela Dodson (Weisz), who is a cop investigating her twin sister's suicide/ possible murder (in another murky bout of storytelling, they don't tell you Weisz is playing twins, so the first fifteen minutes are pure hell to figure out). She thinks there's something altogether mysterious and ooky about it, so she goes to Constantine for help.
Constantine is awash in darkness, from the way the film is shot to its overall tone and subject matter. There's precious little humor in the thing - it takes itself viciously seriously - and mostly the film is a downer. The forces of darkness are suitably twisted and malevolent (Constantine's main enemy on Earth is a demon named Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale) who pretty much looks like a lawyer), but the forces of light are no beacon either - besides Constantine himself, there's Chas Chandler (Shia LeBouf, playing exactly the same role as he did in I,Robot) and a host of weirdo sidekicks who know everything about bugs, who live in the back of bowling alleys, etc. Nothing here is normal, or bright - or explained.
One of Constantine's major problems is that very murkiness it embraces - both in the tone of the piece and in the writing. Absolutely nothing is explained - why exactly is a pool of water a conduit to Hell? - and the viewer is left to grapple with one weirdness after another. Apparently Constantine finds it all normal, so I guess we're supposed to as well. But from the get-go, the lack of clarity in both the visuals and the writing makes the film damn hard to get involved in.
Reeves is fine here as the beleaguered hero. His minimalist approach to acting suits the character just fine, and he gives you just enough to have grudging sympathy for John. Weisz, frankly, most of the time looks lost. I know she's a better actress than this material, but she mostly seems to be wandering around in a daze through the whole film (maybe she had already seen it; she could pass for one of the audience). Two of the other important roles - the archangel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) and Lucifer himself (Peter Stormare) and so badly cast they help wreck whatever scant momentum the film is able to summon up. Swinton seems to have been chosen solely on the basis of resemblance to Cate Blanchett, and Stormare just doesn't have the gravitas to play the King of Hell. When it all comes down at the end, it really feels like Reeves matching up against two 'B' actors - and it's not like anyone is mistaking Keanu for Pacino in the first place.
Constantine has some sharp ideas in it - little thoughtful things here and there sprinkled throughout - but much like the work that inspired it, the film is so busy trying to be cool that it forgot along the way to be good and entertaining as well. I know with the uber-success of Spiderman that a lot of comic book films have been green lighted, and the Blade movies even proved you can go a little dark with them. But not this dark, and certainly not this murky. Purportedly a story about a man trying to escape Hell and win his way back into Heaven, Constantine is more like Purgatory, a drab grey unending plain of nothing, where a sort of grainy twilight prevails. Definitely wait for the DVD, or just skip this one altogether.