Sometimes movies can make you weep, sometimes they can make you jump and sometimes they can make you laugh until your sides hurt. Sometimes they can just make you sigh as they crush you under the awesome weight of their mediocrity. If you see enough movies, the latter feeling is, unfortunately, the most common one.
“Constantine,” starring Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz, is an adaptation of the DC/Vertigo comic book “Hellblazer,” which doesn’t work as a comic book adaptation.
It is also a sort of horror/action film that fails to build any suspense or to pull together at least one fright.
The film deals with the adventures of John Constantine, a man who works as a sort of intermediary between the planes of Earth, Heaven and Hell, “deporting” demons who overstep the rules of a balance set up by God and Satan. With me so far? The film’s metaphysics are mildly interesting, but it soon becomes clear that nothing interesting is going to be done with them. Instead, the script turns the ideas of sin and redemption into nothing but a set of arbitrary rules that all characters must follow. Dumbing down religious ideas into nothing more than superhero fodder really sucks all the fun out of them.
The main thrust of the plot has to do with the spear that pierced Jesus’ side as he fell into the hands of the son of the devil, who hopes to use it to take over Earth. The plot hardly matters in the context of the film, which is all about image and style. Pretty pictures flash before your eyes and it really doesn’t make any difference what you are looking at. It’s emotionally disconnected. Lacking too much in the way of original ideas, it rides a wave of clichés to make it through to the end. The performances are entirely uncompelling, without a strong role in the group. Though he’s not the worst, Reeves in particular is noticeably unremarkable. He simply cannot build up enough charisma to make the material work in his favor.
The tone of the film overall is unsuccessful, taking itself too seriously to be camp and not pulling off enough drama to really be serious. The characters are sketches rather than real people. The filmmakers make the mistake made in too many comic book adaptations, assuming that everyone who sees the film
already knows and loves the
characters. They never take the
time to really delve into what makes them tick. The films that work on their own outside of the comic
book world, such as “Spider-Man 2,” “Hellboy” and the underrated “Hulk,” create real characters
on the screen, making no
assumptions about what the
audience knows.
The direction of “Constantine” is probably the biggest problem. This material has the potential to be
interesting provided it possessed
a little vision. Instead we are given
a first-time director with too much music video experience. It ends up being nothing more than perfunctory, an entry on the résumé of a future Hollywood hack. The film ends up being just flashy enough to be
diverting — no small change in
this otherwise drab cinema season — but it’s all empty calories and meaningless style.

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