Constantine (2005)

Most of the time I'm going into comic book films pretty much blind or with vague recollections of childhood.  With Constantine, however, it is with both having seen the movie within a year or two of it being in the theater and later reading at least one of the graphic novels at a later date, which I believe was when the television show was on.  Both of the latter were enjoyable, especially the show, since even though he was part of the DC universe it didn't feel like the usual timeworn superhero antics.  

What I remembered of the movie, though, did.  Constantine came out before the DC Cinematic Universe got going, but when I first saw it I felt it was like a number of other big budget films at the time: hollow, forgettable and without much story.  So many of the movies of the 2000s foretold how things are today, and rarely do I find myself revamping my opinion of movies from that time period.  This is one of those exceptions because, although it deviates far from the comic, Constantine is still a great supernatural action film. 

John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is a professional exorcist hoping that if he casts enough demons back into hell that he may be able to avoid going there himself.  It seems that he may be making the final journey sooner than later due to a cancer diagnosis and news from Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) that his status with God has not changed.  Still, there is plenty to do on Earth, as a recent exorcism went sideways when the demon tried to use its victim to enter our realm.

It seems that many are breaking the balance due to the recent resurfacing of the Spear of Destiny, the head of which is stained with Christ's blood.  Mammon, the son of Lucifer, is hoping to use it as a way to break out of Hell and enter our realm.  Detective Angela Watson (Rachel Weisz) becomes involved when her twin sister Isabel commits suicide and Constantine, thinking that it may be connected to recent events, investigates.  

Unlike a lot of movies that I changed my opinion on over the years I can pinpoint why I didn't like this one when I first saw it.  Most movies of this type have a specific villain that the hero is fighting.  Here, Mammon is a CGI creation seen in Hell, but never speaks.  Preventing him from coming through is Constantine's main goal, but there is no cat-and-mouse or direct fighting between the two other than an attempt to exorcise him before he can come through.  There are other antagonists, such as the half-breed demon Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale) and Satan himself (Peter Stormare), but they are also nebulous, neither having direct interest in what is happening.  There is another player behind everything but, although it's pretty easy to predict who, they are not revealed until the end. 

Thus, without someone to fight against, things just happen to Constantine, and at the time I didn't understand that this was pretty much par for course for the character.  He's dealing with the divine and the profane, not with megalomaniacs trying to rule the world.  Instead, the main conflict in the movie comes down to being a combination of family dispute and creatures with ambitions that would have wiped out a good portion of humanity if Constantine had not stumbled upon the plan by a fortuitous accident. 

With those expectations out of the way one can get down to enjoying a rare solid acting performance by Keanu Reeves and some good turns by other actors such as Shia LaBeouf as Chas, Constantine's apprentice, and Papa Midnite (Djimoun Hounsou), the Voodoo priest in charge of helping maintain the balance between Heaven and Hell.  There is also an intriguing visual style courtesy of director Francis Lawrence and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, including a vision of Hell being a realm of eternal nuclear hellfire inhabited by rabid demons.  

It is from 2005 and, though there is a mix of digital and practical effects, the former outweighs the latter.  They don't all work two decades later, but Constantine hasn't aged as poorly as some movies from the time.  Effects aside it has, if anything, improved, as the story now stands out as something unique among superhero films.

Constantine (2005)

Time: 121 minutes

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf

Director: Francis Lawrence