A movie as damned as its protagonist. The geeks, striving for a dedication to its source material that will never be approached by the huge committee version of art that is a Hollywood Action Movie Production, could never be pleased. For fuck's sake, his hair is BLOND, dammit! How dare you change that??? The average filmgoer, looking for a couple hours of zombie killing with a pentagram or two thrown in for creepiness, couldn't be bothered to sort through the tricky mythology of a well-written bleak comic book that has a more complex take on Christian mythology than most Bible-belt snake handlers. And hey, everybody hates Keanu. Fuck it, I might watch it on HBO in a year. At least an action scene or two.
I implore the wise readers of g0re.net to avoid these myopic traps and go check out the rarest of rare, a supernatural comic thriller released in February that delivers about 3 times as much as you expect walking in the door. Going back to the geeks, shut the fuck up and enjoy a much better adaptation than a DC cult hit should expect to see, even if it's Neo, his hair color's wrong and it's in L.A., not London. Keanu is *gasp* GOOD, he's understated and pissed off and not out to impress anyone in the movie or in the theater, probably his best work since River's Edge. In a trench and tie, with a cig eternally dangling, he looks very much like a guy who stepped out of a well-drawn comic, and a guy in his position should be top-to-bottom black anyway. Funny enough, he works much better than expected as Constantine.
Going back to the average viewers, either don't show up or actually turn your brain on and put in the work to follow the PLOT (yes, this action movie has an involved plot). They didn't put 8 pages of dialogue together to kill time between CGI attacks on the main characters; this is one of the most event-driven, planned out movies in the comic genre I can think of in recent memory. Are there some plot points that get muddled? Yes, most definitely. A few scenes got left on the editing room floor, but if you've got half a brain and some enjoyment of the material, you'll be rewarded for your patience and involvement, no problem. They managed to get the studio to release a 2 hour cut of a relatively complex story, so I'll forgive them what little didn't make it in. And again, it adds up in the end if you get sucked in, and I'd be surprised if most people around here didn't get sucked in.
Quickly I'll note that the cinematography is great but not too obnoxious, hell is spectacular and not overused (the latter perhaps being more important), there are a few moments of truly surreal horror that I did not expect to be pulled off successfully but were, the sidekick kid is minimal and never a distraction, the cast is strong, the sense of humor is solid, and if nothing else gets you to pony up the $7.50, the lead singer of Bush gets his face pummelled (and is well cast and effective in his role--this is really starting to get scary). Go see Constantine and enjoy, it's destined to become a cult classic IMHO.
Constantine
1"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."