Holy shotgun, Constantine-man!

Rating: 6/10 (21 September 2006)

I have never really gotten into the world of Constantine despite the fact, that it has stories in it written by some of my favourite comic book writers. The character hasn't never really interested me enough, though it does hover around matters which I personally find appealing. That's why I really didn't have any expectations of this film.
It has parts in it I liked and parts I didn't like. The character of Constantine is, as far I know, pretty faithful to the original with the exception of that originally he's a Brit, who looks like Sting. And he's not so much of an action man. The world comics are set in and the world that the movie has seem pretty similar to me. But as I said I am not an expert on this matter, so I am sure, that the people who actually have read more than a couple of Hellblazer comics will beg to differ.
So let's tackle it shall we? John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is a modern day wizard, who battles against the daemons of hell to make amends in order to gain back his place in heaven. He finds out that certain parties are trying to get son of Satan on earth. He gets help from a police Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), who's dead twin sister seems to have something to do with the case. I am sure you'll fill in the blanks.
The plot is clichéd as heck. Nothing in the movie comes as a surprise and the "surprise plot twist" are so old, that even a blind could see them coming from far. That actually wouldn't be a problem, as I actually liked the visual appearance of the film, but the direction was very lacking: it seemed to lack enough tensity to keep me on the edge of my seat.
As I said, I liked the visual appearance of the film. There are some pretty nice SFX in there, but sadly the cons do win over the pros here. Constantine is not biggest piece of garbage in the comic book movie genre, far from it, but spectacular or memorable film it isn't. Which is a kind of a shame really.