Great Entertainment

Rating: 6/10 (25 February 2005)

Constantine is another of the current trend of adapting all comic book characters to the screen. The funny thing about adapting comic books is the fact that most of the times the characters come out as dense as a piece of paper (which reminds the terrible "Batman and Robin", by Joel Schumacher or "Daredevil" by Mark Steven Johnson). Sometimes however you actually have an adventure film, that boasts a great look and also something besides image trickery ("Batman" by Tim Burton is the best example, for there you have characters with some density, motivations, inner conflicts). "Constantine" is a good example of an entertaining film, that doesn't have much pretensions and therefore it's results are quite decent. I personally did not know the comic, and nor do I feel the need to: I went to see the film for it's own merits and I judge it on those premises alone. Francis Lawrence the director has the visual flair of a video-clip director, but without being excessive (Tony Scott and Michael Bay are names that always comes to mind in that department). The look of the film is beautiful, thanks to Philippe Rousselot the french director of photography (he was responsible for "Interview with the Vampire" and "Henry and June"), and the acting is actually not as bad as one might have anticipated. Keanu Reeves manages to infuse some credibility to his part, more so than he has done in so many previous incarnations of his (the most terrible that comes to mind is "Bram Stoker's Dracula" by Francis Coppola). His performance isn't great, but it isn't terrible. The always wonderful Tilda Swinton doesn't have much screen time, but her beauty and talent are on full display when she does appear. Rachel Weisz has an underwritten role as the lady in distress - as a detective I was expecting another kind of character, but her performance is just plain (far from her riskier side in "The Shape of Things" by Neil LaBute). This film ends up being a good entertainment for two hours. It's well written and it's visually engrossing. These days, that's more than you can say about a lot of films on the theaters. Go see it!