Hell On Earth

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2006)

Okay, I admit it: I was predisposed against 'Constantine' before I ever set foot in the cinema. I'm a bad, bad man. I'm fond of the John Constantine character in the 'Swamp Thing' and 'Hellblazer' comics, and thought the decision to transform Vertigo's middle-aged scouse occult wide-boy into a surly Keanu Reeves, and move the setting from London to LA was foolish. How ill considered and prejudiced of me. I also thought that a horror movie directed by a pop video maker would be little more than a particularly bloody epileptic lightshow. What a cultural snob I am.
Pity I was right, isn't it?
It's a lazy movie. Constantine's emotional response to the discovery that he has lung cancer is akin to the disdain of a supermarket teller who discovers the bar-code on a tin of beans won't scan. The sly charm and sarcasm of the comic Constantine (the defining characteristics and, consequently, the principal reasons for his appeal over the past twenty years) is transformed into sulky rudeness  presumably because guile is beyond the ability of the leading man. Rachel Weisz is little better. She's in twitchy funny-accent mode, though, which is never a good sign. Tilda Swinton tries very hard as the Angel Gabriel to be a little more than an archetype, as does Peter Stormare as a particularly oleaginous Satan, but both these character-actors are set exclusively as antagonists to Reeves  but as all true drama comes from conflict and contrast between characters, the poor sods are working against a brick wall. Francis Lawrence's direction iswellnot apparent.
It's hard to see who the film is aimed at. Much of the iconography and many of the characters from the comics are retained: Constantine is aided by his taxi-driver friend Chaz (who, in the US, would call a Charles 'Chaz'?), and frequents the occult club of the witch-doctor Papa Midnite, but these icons are distorted to such a degree that they bear no relation to their originals. There's a reliance on gimmicky props, such as the 'Holy Shotgun', which the comics have been mercifully free of these past two decades. Indeed there's so little of the character and back-story of the 'real' Constantine in evidence here that it's a wonder they even bothered to use the name,
Visually, there are flashes of brilliance. David Lazan's art-direction is very good. His design of Hell (a fire-storm ravaged urban desert) is splendid, but it's over-used to the point where it becomes almost tedious, and an escalating reliance upon CGI effects also gives the overall impression of this being a particularly over-ambitious Aerosmith video.