visually impressive, but lacks depth

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2006)

well, at least they tried it....
what you get is a music video director's feature film debut, and it shows... unlike for example the Scott brothers, who both started at MTV but really showed how to pair visual style with story and likable, strong characters, this mess of a film has a hard time to capture your interest throughout the whole play time.
to start with, most of the casting is nearly perfect, if it was not for Keanu Reeves. He's reprising his lame role from Matrix, where he had 2 facial impressions. that was okay for the role of Neo, but it definitely is NOT okay for a deeply troubled role as Constantine. Ah well... I know it's getting bored to bitch about reeves and his missing acting talents, but here it shows.... badly...
Second, you get a somewhat interesting story and characters, paired with bad dialogue and just missing talent from the director to communicate this to the audience. Hell, I'm writing this as I'm watching Constantine for the third time or so, this is how boring it can get.
All the time I'm watching this with friends, they tell me how "God's Army/The Prophecy is so much better than this", and they're right: no CGI, no budget, but a hell of a movie: tense, interesting, compelling.
Don't get me wrong, Constantine had potential, and you can spot it in nearly every minute of the long) running time of app. 115 minutes. But it also makes you angry, because this franchise (remember, it's a comic book adaptation) had lots more potential than this mess.
There are some truly great ideas in the script, you get some really great actors, but when the director doesn't care, you don't get a great movie.
Missed opportunity, but worth watching at least once.