Product: Constantine [Blu-ray] (2012)
Rating: 3.0
3 1/2 Stars: Strolling through Hell
John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is a busy guy. He is called upon to perform exorcisms: the first one of which is a direct steal from "The Exorcism." Constantine finds a child crawling along the walls of her bedroom like a crab while her mother and family say the rosary and pray until Constantine literally beats the demon out of her and onto a mirror, out of which the demon cannot escape: neat trick.Constantine is also a very sick guy and is given only a short time to live because of an advanced stage of lung cancer though he feels no compunction to stop smoking those unfiltered Chinese made cigarettes of his.One of the funky/unusual/cool things about this film is, if you are a Christian or know anything about Christianity or actually religion, the sheer amount of Christian iconography in this film will boggle your mind. There is more stuff on view here than a curio shop in Rome.After about 20 years of watching Keanu Reeves on the screen and scratching my head at the sheer audacity (remember him in "Bram Stoker's Dracula") of his non-performances, I've either gotten used to him or gotten to appreciate him. I'm not sure which. And it started with the Matrix films in which he is not called upon to do much but look well groomed and serious.Rachel Weisz plays a cop who seeks help from Constantine to solve the murder/suicide of her twin sister. Weisz spends a lot of time in a wet tank top which is just fine with me though before undergoing a tub plunging scene she asks Constantine if she has to get naked and he says rather blandly, No. It is at this point that I realiz how sick from the cancer Constantine really is.Peter Stormare plays the Devil (yes, the real thing, not a demon) as a 70's Disco Dude and he is nasty and fun but it's probably Tilda Swinton as the angel-gone-bad Gabriel who steals the movie."Constantine" is not the best film ever made, but it is fun, the visual effects are first rate and you have Rachel Weisz cavorting in a wet tank top. And in these lean times in which the studios are putting out all the junk they couldn't find a place for last Fall...these are pretty good things.