Film Reviews

Constantine

• Rating:
• Director: Francis Lawrence
• Starring: Djimon Hounsou
• Details: US/ 122 mins/ (16s).

Poor old Keanu Reeves - he sure knows how to pick 'em. Barely had The Matrix trilogy revitalised his standing as Hollywood's favourite blank canvas and he tries to go all supernatural on us with this adaptation of the long-in-development cult graphic novel, Hellblazer. This time around Keanu's not quite so fortunate as the very slight Constantine takes itself far too seriously to register much of an impact, thanks primarily to its overly rigorous stylistics and the galling absence of anything resembling an involving plot.
For the record, Keanu plays our eponymous hero, a chain-smoking paranormal investigator, based in LA. As world-weary as they come, the cancer-riddled Constantine has been able to see demons and angels since his troubled childhood. After a 'routine' exorcism goes somewhat askew, Constantine worries that the order of things has been upset. Those suspicions are confirmed when a cop (a badly cast Rachel Weisz) asks for his help regarding the suicide of her twin sister (also played by Weisz) and their combined investigations leads Constantine to fear the worst for mankind...
In a previous life, director Francis Lawrence used to make videos for the likes of Britney Spears, Will Smith and Aerosmith, and he doesn't seem to have adjusted his attitude for his motion picture debut. Overly reliant on gothic and biblical schlocky imagery, Constantine has a heavy-duty stylised air about it, while Lawrence doesn't appear to know what to do with a narrative, using chunky bits of nonsensical dialogue to fill in the gaps before he launches into his next action sequence. For a movie about the salvation of souls, Constantine doesn't seem to have much of one itself.

Review by Garreth Murphy