B-Movie plot with A-list special effects

Rating: 3/10 (7 January 2008)

No premise is silly enough for Hollywood. How about this one?: God and the devil use disguised angels and demons as pawns in an eternal stalemate on earth, but a handful of people can actually see them. Like our hero, John Constantine (Keanu Reeves). Constantine is some sort of Phil Marlowe of the occult, dressed like a Man in Black (let's face it, demons are probably just another species of aliens).
As so often before, Reeves' acting is as expressive as a concrete wall, but this time he has an excuse: His character is based on a comic book hero. Still, his whole performance screams: "Give me back my coat and shades from The Matrix!" Constantine, a one-time suicide victim, is offered a chance to find redemption as certain sinister powers are trying to upset the "balance" by bringing the Son of Satan into the world. Beelzebub jr. - unsurprisingly - chooses Rachel Weisz to hatch him but his decision is not just based on good taste, there aren't actually many other women on the cast-list of this piece of mind-boggling nonsense. Except, of course, the divine Tilda Swinton, who appears as the archangel Gabriel - why not Gabrielle, one is inclined to ask - just in time for the show-down.
Constantine, Gabriel and Satan (gleefully played by Peter Stormare, Milton already new that the devil is so much more interesting a character than god) fight it out over Rachel Weisz's body in a sequence of actually quite beautiful shots involving a swimming-pool and lots of broken glass.
Still, the only way in which this movie makes you scared of eternal damnation is that hell must be like watching this kind of trash over and over for aeons and aeons.