Nice images, good performance - stupid religious backdrop

Rating: 6/10 (20 April 2007)

This is exactly the kind of (pseudo-)christian dementia I find Baaaah - crosses and holy water again, and the common knowledge of the middle ages re-elevated to its deserved height as universal truth. Let's burn a few witches, folks! But if you want to appreciate the drama, you have to stuff the garbage at least once.
Rachel Weisz and Keanu Reeves both deserve credit for their performances, but I can't help wondering why they signed on to this in the first place. The camera work is beautiful, so are the special effects, so once you manage to ignore half the religious crap, you can enjoy a good bit of light-weight horror show with a psycho-dramatic touch.
I particularly like the character of Gabriel. Tilda Swinton plays her with glorious well-meaning arrogance, and her show of ignorance towards humanity is important to understand Constantine's self-pitying indifference and apparent cruelty. Weisz and Reeves make a nice pair. The plot isn't boring, though on second watch I would have wished for some real punches in the stomach that I was always waiting for, but that never came.