How a main character can ruin a movie

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2006)

A movie, like most other artistic media built as a union of other media, is about balance. A well-crafted movie provides a good balance between acting, writing, cinematography, effects, music, sound effects, etc. A poor movie often has a lacking of one of these elements, or overemphasizes one element improperly over another.
Constantine is an example of what happens to a movie when you only get most of it in balance. The cinematography is good, the acting out of most everyone is good to excellent, the writing works almost all of the time, etc. The main thing that is out of balance in this movie is John Constantine. The main character.
Just about every other character you meet, even the angle Gabriel who is in 2-3 scenes of the movie, is ten times more interesting than Constantine. Angela, the second lead on the movie, is a far deeper, more interesting character than Constantine will ever be. It's not just that Constantine is a jerk (and at no time is he ever not a jerk) to anyone; he's just not an interesting character.
His motivation is weak. He's constantly being told that what he's doing has no effect on him going to Heaven or not, but he does it anyway. And it's not like we're talking about helping old ladies across the street; he's fighting demons and stuff, having to special-order holy water and have appropriate weapons and such built for him. This is dangerous work, work that has already earned the ire of much of Hell's population. And since that's where he's destined to go, why honk off the locals who are already going to torture you for eternity anyway? We're expect to believe that he is developing certain feelings towards Angela through the movie (though she doesn't seem to return them. Probably due to the aforementioned jerkery). We know this because he kisses her once. And he considered asking her to get naked. That's it; that's the totality of the character development in this direction.
Which leads to the question of why the character fails. All the other characters are played by skilled actors and are well written. Constantine fails as a character either because the actor (Keanu Reeves) can't pull the character off, or because the writer didn't do a good enough job to make the character work.
It's easy to blame Reeves; he simply can't act (his performance in The Devil's Advocate not withstanding). There were times where I'm sure the writer expected Constantine's actor to give Angela furtive looks, or speak certain lines in such a way as to suggest a growing attachment. Reeves failed miserably at this task; when the aforementioned kiss comes up, it feels totally out of character for him. At that point, you imagine that Constantine sees Angela as just another one of the people he's helped before.
On the other hand, there are lines of dialog that I can't imagine working from true masters of the thespian arts, let alone a hack like Reeves. Yet this is the same writer that gives Rachel Weisz (Angela), Djimon Hounsou (Papa Midnite), Tilda Swinton (Gabriel), Peter Stormare (Satan), and even Shia LaBeouf (Constantine's sidekick Chaz) license to deliver performances that range from strong to excellent.
Now, I believe it's entirely possible that the various writers could make the other characters interesting and fail with the main one. So, unlike most of the other reviews, I'm not going to pin Constantine's problems solely on Reeves; I'll accept a 70:25:5% split. It's mostly Reeves's fault, but the writing fails him sometimes. And the director gets 5% of the blame because... he's the director. Problems in the movie are always his fault. If Reeves was a problem, the director shouldn't have cast him.
Though John Constantine is a constant weight around this movie's neck, the other characters do make up for it for the most part. The plot is interesting, and the world is well-crafted. There's CG, but it only enhances.
The only other issue with the film not previously discussed is the ending. While, at the time, I didn't have problems with it, I do understand and acknowledge that the plot twist at the end may not agree with everyone. Having Gabriel turn evil at the end was strange and out of left field; she only had one scene before this, so having her be the main villain could be jarring. However, I found it to work well enough, despite not playing fair with the audience.
Overall, I found the movie to be good, despite its faults.