MOVIE REVIEW: Constantine
For those who are religious and believe in the conventional terms of who gets invited into Heaven and who gets sent down to Hell, you might experience a hard time sitting through this movie, since it plays on the various beliefs of life-after-death (and not intelligently either).
Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine, a dry-witted exorcist/detective of the evil supernatural (think Neo from 'The Matrix,' but with a terrible smoker's cough and a few gray shirts). At a young age, Constantine discovers that he had the rare power of seeing demons roaming the streets of the Earth (who -- to the naked eye -- are invisible). Residing in Los Angeles, he makes a living by pulling demons (who attempt to escape Hell) out of the young girls' souls they posses. His smoking habit presumably gets him into his own form of Hell when he discovers he is dying of lung cancer (oh, bummer). Now he is stuck with the personal dilemma of trying to figure out how he can save his ass from going to the fiery realms of Hell (where he would most likely be angrily greeted by those he personally sent down there, ouch).
During his personal investigation, he meets Angela (Rachel Weisz) who is attempting to figure out the mystery of her twin sisters' suicide at the psychiatric ward she resided in. Through their shared visions of the supernatural, they become a team seeking revenge against the demons that have made their way onto planet Earth (think the A-team, except without Mr. T and all of those golden chains). With Constantine’s connections, he gets guided to the right path and eventually is saved from death when he encounters Lucifer (who is the one who determines everyones' fate prior to dying).
That is pretty much the entire story in a nutshell, sans a few action-driven scenes, a love story and Keanu looking confused as usual.
The most useless character in the movie is that of Constantine's personal chauffeur named Chas (played by the Disney-gone-Hollywood star, Shia LaBeouf). His character basically pops in whenever Constantine needs a ride to kill a few demons, and on occasion, cracks a few jokes for cheap laughs (hey, being funny comes with a price nowadays). Although a pretty useless character, Shia made Chas a memorable one, but not enough for me to love the movie ('Even Stevens' on the other hand, I love!).
There were moments in the film where the scenes dragged, especially Constantine’s long confrontation with Lucifer, and other moments that should have never been picked up from the cutting room floor (such as the unnecessarily contrived love story). All through-out the movie, Constantine is percieved as a cold-hearted guy who is on a prowl to selfishly save himself from demise, but conveniently at the end, the only female in the film becomes Constantine's main squeeze (gee, who would've thought someone like him can love?). It's unbelievable and very forced, but hey, if the guy might be going to Hell, he might as well gain a heart from the entire experience, right?
My advice to anyone who plans to see this film is to brush up on the various biblical and philosophical interpretations of Heaven, Hell and exorcism, so that once the movie is over and your friends want to sit down and analyze the meaning(s) and symbolism(s) behind this simple movie disguised as a thought-provoking one, you can show off your biblical skills! Amen.
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