silly but better than some

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2006)

John Constantine is a chain-smoking exorcist with only a few months left to live. Although he knows that he is already destined to spend eternity in hell for a mortal sin he committed in the past, John is still attempting to find redemption by dedicating himself to battling the demonic forces that exist just beneath the surface of our known reality and which have lately been making a greater effort to cross over from their world to ours.
I imagine that the Catholic Church must be rather pleased with this film, especially considering the black eye it suffered at the hands of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Here the incantations and paraphernalia of the Roman church have a great deal of efficacy in keeping the demonic forces Constantine encounters subdued and at bay.
Strictly as a movie and not as a theological document, "Constantine" is a slightly better-than-average demonic thriller that goes back and forth between the world of humans and the shadowy netherworld inhabited by angels and demons and even a few creatures that fall somewhere in between. In a role not all that far removed from the one he played in the "Matrix" movies, Keanu Reeves once again functions as the flawed Everyman hero whose job it is to save humanity from a fate worse than, in this case, eternal death. We're more willing to accept the silliness of the premise knowing we have Reeves to guide us along the movie's path. The special effects are impressive for the most part, with special credit going to the art designers for their imaginative view of hell (which looks much like a city after it's been destroyed by a nuclear explosion). The film is, admittedly, too long and the nonsense quotient begins to run dangerously high long about the last half hour. But "Constantine" is, overall, sufficiently imaginative to keep us interested for most of its duration.