It's all about The Balance.

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2007)

My misuse of the 10/10 is all about Keeping the Balance (said in best Keanu voice).
It seems a certain rabid Hellblazer fan has attempted to spread the non-luv with a zillion reviews saying the same thing about how this ruined the comic and how Keanu is a moron. I totally understand adaptation-disappointment and sympathize. (But come on, give me a break. But it seems that hundreds of people have fallen for these cookie-cutter reviews...unless it's the same person making their neg reviews popular?) Regardless, I think in this case, you have to take the film as it is and not focus so much on comparing it to Hellblazer. Comic/graphic novel adaptations always come out different--they're two totally different visual mediums (there's a good reason Alan Moore doesn't want to do screenplays for adaptations of his books), and I think filmmakers need to be cut some slack for just trying to make a good movie that works on all levels. I think Francis Lawrence and crew (particularly the DP, editor, and production designer) have done an extraordinary job in adapting the medium, even though some Hellblazer fans might fault the adaptation of the content. It's tough to translate the hyperbolic normal of a comic bk world in film--it's a fine line between cheesy and cool when on the screen. But I felt they kept the balance quite impressively. Every moment that had the potential to cross the melodrama-cheese line suddenly cut to something normal/humorous enough that kept it all in amazing balance. In other words, they made that world believable enough to draw you into the story. And aside from the wasp-demon's face (the one bad egg), the CG was great. There's a ton of it, but it doesn't feel that way; it was generally very organic and melded into the fabric of the production design.
With said fine line (between cheesy & cool) in mind, the acting was great for the most part (and I disagree with Mr. Write-a-zillion-reviews/Enemy-of-all-that-is-Keanu--I think this was one of Honsou's more unimpressive performances--he sounded like he was reading his lines). It's why I think Keanu, for all the bashing he gets, is really a rather good actor on average. A hell of a lot easier to do scenes where you don't have to talk about dragon-breath and fight with halfbreed CG characters and make melodrama believable--and just play an ordinary character in the ordinary world like our more celebrated celebs are so often celebrated for doing. I found his of Constantine to have depth--not so simple to interpret when your character is a guarded, solitary, hardened person. Despite the fact that the Matrix comparisons are the first to be thrown around, I'm thinking that casting Keanu for the role was equally, if not more about his performance in The Devil's Advocate. (Which was one of his better films, methinks. Actually, I thought there were some similarities in terms of how these films dealt with supernatural horror elements--it's an accomplishment to make those elements legit and powerful enough without the gratuitous creepiness that makes a lot of typical horror obnoxious/manipulative/cheap...IMO, of course.) And back to the script and directing--I felt it was solid all the way through. Deleted scenes say a lot for a director--it's praiseworthy when every one of them would've really hurt (or even ruined) the film as a whole and got scrapped, re-shot, or heavily re-edited. I'm impressed with Francis Lawrence, who didn't have mounds of experience, but really crafted a satisfying, intricately balanced (heh-heh), non-cliché story out of all the elements at hand--and even more so as the subject matter (heaven/hell, evil, salvation, etc) is a heavy and delicate one.
This is an adaptation that works in capturing the spirit of a very broad, layered story medium and crafting it into a more compact yet more visually-layered story medium. I really hate that I listened to the din of purists (and all those who like to parrot/regurgitate the "wooden" Keanu diss..."wooden"? Come on.) and didn't catch the film in the theater. This one's a keeper.