Hell Wants Him, Earth Needs Him, Film Lacked Him

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2005)

Heaven won't take Constantine. WE should take the movie though and leave the lame ones of this genre behind. Many films having to do with supernatural forces, demons, angels, the occult, etc all attempt to be something original and interesting but fail. Some examples include Lost Souls and the prequel to the Exorcist. But this movie gives us something a little different. It has a good concept--a doomed man exorcising demons on earth to get his way into heaven. That is only a tad of the story--there is more to it that kept me quite entertained and waiting to see what would happen next. It is not only brainless action and special effects. I was actually afraid that it would be that way and that the story would be weak. There is a story and it follows through a bit smoothly. There are only a few dull moments where I lost track of what was being said because the dialogue was much too prolonged. But other than that I will say that they did a fair job with this one. It is not awesomely great either; it had its flaws. There are some instances in the movie that was unnecessary and if they were taken in another direction, this would have been better. But as I said before--compared to the other films of this genre--this is one of the better ones fortunately. It has a dark and ominous atmosphere and it puts you through each plane in the film--Hell, Earth, and Heaven. The visuals were very well done for all three of them and transitions through them were good. Added on to that, Constantine is actually an interesting and cool character to put in a movie like this. Hell wants him, Earth needs him, but Film lacked him; and by that I mean that many movies in this category lacked an attention-grabbing lead character...and story for that matter. This one succeeds in those two departments. So if you are a fan of this movie and were able to sit through the mediocre End of Days, then you will like this one. It is one of the better movies of the year so far =)
6.8/10 Stars