No Style, Even Less Substance

Rating: 2/10 (22 February 2005)

1) Take one inexpensive (and inexperienced) music video director. 2) Use the money saved to buy a pretty wooden floorboard. 3) Add the literary giants who brought you The Glimmer Man and Suburban Commando. 4) Liberally scatter a handful of schlock horror/action producers from Warner Brothers. 5) Throw them all in a self-congratulatory pot with $140 million dollars and leave to stew.
The resulting mess is Constantine; a movie whose plot holes, bland performances, insipid production design, third-rate CGI and mind-numbing tedium would take more time to describe than the actual movie took to endure. I saw this the same weekend I rented Hunting Humans, a no-budget Canadian homemade horror movie shot in various back yards with the worst post-production dubbing I've seen since John Waters' Pink Flamingoes. The reason I mention this is because Constantine makes Hunting Humans look like vintage Hitchcock.
At all costs, don't allow yourself to be consumed by the candy-like allure of the expertly tailored trailers. I refused to buy four underage kids tickets at the box office and can sleep soundly knowing that I saved two hours of their life. This is tripe of the highest order and fails to warrant even the tentative support of renting it from Blockbuster. If you find a pirate copy being sold from a suitcase at your local, neighbourhood Greyhound station, by all means buy a copy, but please, PLEASE, don't encourage these talentless cretins with legitimate business.
2 out of 10