Well-paid FX trying hard to save the day

Rating: 2/10 (21 April 2005)

"Constantine" is far faaar away from the the expectations everyone had and also from being a blockbuster.. If there's anything to it it's the special effects and they should NOT count more than 30% of a movie's quality. They say that film is the 7th art, so movies should express the creator's ideas/concepts through story and characters - to make others ask themselves questions, explore a different view of the world - or just make people laugh (like in comedies) or get their adrenaline going (thriler, action, horror etc).
There is nothing truly original about this movie..
So what was "Constantine"'s purpose?
Demolishing the biblical myth of Good and Evil as super-human forces, unjudgeable from our human a.k.a. limited point of view by saying it's just a game between God and Lucifer? And that they must be doing this for fun, playing us like marionettes? Geez, this is as old as the Greeks(which, you know, thought of gods as being pretty "human" in feelings and judgement). The film-maker could of at least add something to this ancient, saturated view of good&evil; try to give new arguments sustaining the theory, explore it with more depth or at least make the skepticism in the movie more ironic and fun, make it all much more pragmatic... But like this it seems like stealing a wannabe interesting-pragmatic-view just to have a pretext for making a movie... It's a horrible cliché and just for this I would have been ashamed to make so much publicity for this production :)
OK... so we definitely don't have here a revolutionary view of the universe.
Then, was this meant to be a get-my-adrenaline-going movie? Get freaked out by scary demons and be fascinated with the mysterious psychological games Gabriel, The Devil and Constantine play? hmmm... on a scale from 1 to 10 I would grade this goal with a 4... The only thing I didn't see coming was Gabriel helping Mammon and, although it's not at all new as well (see another angel, Lucifer, with his rebellion against God), it did turn out to be surprising (gotta hand it to the actress who played Gabriel, pretty convincing role). Stormare (Devil) was also good in his part, managing to get the best out of his poorly written lines.
Constantine's lines are really pathetic.. I mean, "This is John, John Constantine. ..asshole" It's only meant to be cool for fifth grade, right? Sounds like "Bond, James Bond". Come on ppl...couldn't they find a less-popular cliché to copy? pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. And also giving the demons "the finger"... For a swift, smooth, cool exorcist superhero in denial of his status kind of guy it's.. indefinably stupid, it makes the character look like a big fat Looser(this among many other things).
OK.. so storyline and suspense 0 points out of 10.
Acting - 4 for Constantine, 7 for Gabriel and the Devil, 5 for Angela.
The special FX were pretty good, but not exceptional, except for the Hell. I'm sure everyone can comment on this part, cause it's really simple to say whether you were impressed with visual effects or not.. cause they have a big impact on you in a movie.
All in all I see this as a very commercial movie, but one resembling a low-budget one.. Too many loose ends, too many clichés, too little concern for the substance. That's what happens when you only care about profit.