Oh Dear...

Rating: 4/10 (26 February 2005)

Oh dear... An unfortunate choice of lead actors lets Constantine down - Weisz is flat and stilted as an uber-catholic detective, Reeves is even more wooden than ever before as the chain smoking bad-boy exorcist John Constantine. The special effects are pretty flashy (I enjoyed them) and the costumes are great, but the dialogue is worse than awful and the story gets a little fuzzy in the middle. Luckily the movie is saved by Satan and the Archangel Gabriel. Peter Stormare is wonderfully insane as Lucifer, perhaps the best cinema interpretation of the devil I've ever seen (in a really nice suit). Tilda Swinton plays the androgynous Gabriel and is just fantastic (also in a really nice suit). See the film for those two characters, but beware of the many moments where the camera is drawn irresistibly down Rachael Weisz's shirt....