Constantine (2005)

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou, Peter Stormare, and a cameo from Michelle Monaghan
Grade: B-

The action and the scene in which Constantine retrieves the hospital bracelet from Hell really saves the film from being a “C+“.

Summary

In Mexico, a man finds the Spear of Destiny (the spear that stabbed Jesus when he was being crucified) wrapped in a Nazi flag, after digging with his friend. He then becomes possessed once he gets hit with a car immediately after.

Back in Los Angeles, occult detective and chain-smoking antihero John Constantine (Reeves) is given a job by Father Hennessey (Pruitt Taylor Vince) to help with an exorcism. He is able to get the demon out of a younger girl and into a mirror. Next, he launches the mirror out of a window and onto the taxicab that his driver Chas Kramer (LaBeouf) is driving. Kramer wants to be a part of Constantine’s missions really bad, but he ignores Kramer as he gets driven back to his house. Meanwhile, a detective named Angela (Weisz) goes to confession to say she’s killed another person. That night, she has a dream her twin sister Isabel (also played by Weisz) jumps off a building and kills herself. The next morning, she finds out her sister did in fact kill herself in that exact way, jumping off the mental institution she was a patient of. However, Angela refuses to believe it was a suicide because they are devout Catholics. At the same time, Constantine gets the news he has lung cancer and is going to die.

Naturally, he responds by lighting up a cigarette in the hospital. He beats Angela to the elevator and refuses to hold it for her too.

After a talk with Beeman (Max Baker) about the weirdness of his previous mission with a “soldier” demon somehow possessing a young girl (when those things usually can’t do that), Constantine goes to meet with Archangel Gabriel (Swinton). Meanwhile, Angela goes to the same place at the same time to meet with her priest to try to convince him to let Isabel have a Catholic funeral. Gabriel denies Constantine a life extension and the possibility of getting to Heaven because him killing demons is him trying to “buy” his way there. To put it bluntly, Gabriel tells him he’s going to die, he’s a bad person, and he’s going to hell. Angela is also denied the Catholic funeral thing because the bishop still thinks Isabel’s death was a suicide. She overhears the ending of Constantine’s conversation and even watches him leave the place. While outside, he prefers to walk in the rain instead of accepting Kramer’s offer for a ride. That night, Angela watches the security tape of Isabel’s death and right before she jumps, she says “Constantine”. Angela watches it over again and for some reason, the word isn’t said even though she knows she heard it that first time.

Later, after Constantine gets into a fist fight with some demon made entirely of bugs, he heads over to a club owned by witch doctor Papa Midnite (Hounsou). Kramer tries to come with him while talking about how Midnite swore the oath of neutrality and all the other lore he knows, but Constantine isn’t interested in bringing him with. Because of this, Kramer is stopped by the bouncer by failing this card-reading test to get in. Alone, Constantine enters this club considered to be neutral ground for angels and demons to speak privately with Midnite. In Midnite’s office, Constantine talks about how the demon that just attacked him was a full demon, not a half-breed. Plus, he had to fight that soldier demon in that girl in the first part of the movie. Midnite assures him this is impossible. Demons stay in hell and angels stay in heaven. As Midnite tells him he’s neutral and helps maintain the balance, Constantine gets frustrated at the lack of help he’s getting from him. As Constantine alludes to a war brewing between the groups, half-breed demon Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale) interrupts to talk shit to him. Constantine threatens to deport him back to Hell, but Midnite demands he not try anything in his club. Later, Angela goes to meet Constantine at his apartment. She pleads with him to help with her sister, talking about how before Isabel died, she became deeply paranoid and started talking about demons, angels, and everything else Constantine specializes in. She thinks Isabel was coerced by a cult or something to jump and asks for any sort of help. He refuses and even offends her on the way out after responding with an extreme lack of compassion regarding the suicide.

Once she leaves, Constantine sees a dust storm of supernatural figures fly by the outside of his apartment. Seeing this, he catches up with Angela on the street and talks about how God and the Devil made a standing bet on the souls of all mankind. As a rule, they couldn’t have any direct contact with humans, only influence. He’s not sure if they did it for fun or whatever else. Obviously, Angela isn’t buying any of this and says she doesn’t believe in the Devil. He tells her that the Devil believes in her. They are then interrupted by all the streetlights turning off, with not another soul in sight. Realizing an attack is brewing, Constantine wraps gauze around his hand and sets it on fire, using it to burn a group of demons circling them.

Well, let’s say he made her a believer.

He notes that the demons weren’t after him, they were after her. He challenges her theory about Isabel not committing suicide because if she wasn’t in hell, the demons wouldn’t be after Angela. They go back to her apartment, and he does this little ritual trick to enter a portal into hell. There, he finds Isabel, confirming her suicide. When he comes back, he gives Angela the hospital bracelet Isabel had on to prove it. Shocked at this revelation, she is now fully on board with finding out the next step on how to stop these demons and Constantine is locked in because he knows that this world-changing war he was worried about is very real.

My Thoughts:

The world-building of Constantine is very intriguing and one of its biggest highlights. For starters, we have a different, darker take on God for the first time in a while. When Constantine explains to Angela that the reason for things being the way they are is because of a game between God and the Devil to “see how many souls they can get” just by influencing and no direct contact, it really gives you an idea of the cynical world we are entering. Usually, the line between good and evil (or God and the Devil) is thickly bolded, but Constantine shows us that though this line is still there, it’s as a thin as a pencil, with everyone dipping their feet into both sides as they tiptoe it. Just to mess with people and to have bragging rights over the other, God and the Devil decide to play with human beings and see where they can push them. It’s a very different take on the God/Devil/good/evil story. It really gets you interested in the Hellblazer comic book property it’s based on. However, with the way things turn out, I still can’t help but feel they undersold what they could have done with this film had they been all-in on it. For instance, look at the film’s depiction of Hell. A few times, we get a glimpse of what Hell looks like and it wasn’t very impressive at all. Clearly, they wanted to make their own version of Hell staunchly different to what we usually see in movies and shows. The result just looked like Nevada with demons running around. I feel like a full “fire and brimstone” type of look would’ve been much better. It could still be dark to fit the tone of the movie, but the dystopian look they chose seemed too broad and unimaginative, underutilizing the scenarios, possibilities and thoughts we have of the most horrible place ever created. I needed more fire, scary creature designs, and a feeling that would make you sweat a little when watching it.

Surrounding this overarching God/Devil issue is a lot of deep mythology that may be a little too much to digest for mainstream audiences. It’s still interesting, but I’ll admit it’s not for everyone. There’s a lot to unpack and understand during this runtime, so if you’re not fully entrenched in the story, you may get lost on the details and not really care. Along with this, you got half-breeds, full breeds, and angels and demons regularly popping up on Earth to cause a stir, giving us a dreary world full of colorful characters and excitingly horrific moments. Then, there’s the rough and tough, super cool smoker John Constantine being the middleman, existing to balance things out by sending the ones that get out of line back to their supernatural habitat. It’s all pretty interesting if you enjoy these types of themes and topics.

The character of John Constantine is really cool. Though his performance in the role completely Americanizes the comic book character it’s based on and looks nothing like him on top of it, Keanu Reeves’s general look fits the vibe of the movie. This may be annoying for fans of the Hellblazer comic book, but for the novice viewer watching it with no background information, he does a decent job. Unfortunately, he just doesn’t have the spark that fits the description of the cynical asshole John Constantine truly is. He has moments, but he’s ultimately nicer than what the screenplay suggests. Maybe it’s just in Reeves’s nature to be too likable, but I’m not sure. Throughout, they try to convince us he’s going to be sent to Hell for being a bad person, but besides not holding the elevator for Angela in an early scene, he doesn’t really seem like someone deserving of eternal damnation. I understand he tried to kill himself when he was younger so he’s going to Hell regardless, but Gabriel is rather insistent on him being a terrible person on top of that. I don’t see it. He’s kind of a dick, but I don’t see “evil” out of him. I think more should’ve been done to make him seem like a true antihero, rather than a cool guy that smokes and talks shit to people. If that’s what makes you evil, make sure you never go to any bar on the East Coast.

Reeves’s voice is a little too cheesy too. It seems like he’s trying too hard to be cool. They needed an actor that just oozes badassery and has the looks of someone that has no problem killing on the spot. Don’t get me wrong, Reeves has always been a great action hero, but a different type of badass was needed for the way this character was wrote, in a film like this one. He still does a solid job, but I can’t help but think that someone else could’ve fit this role better.

Honestly, it’s too bad Clint Eastwood was too old at this point. A young Clint would’ve crushed this if they wanted to remake the character as an American, though this is a moot point because the comic was created in the late 80s and he was already aging by then. It’s fun to dream though, right?

Shia LaBeouf’s Chaz Kramer had a lot of potential and seemed to be a much-needed comedic sidekick for John, but he was underutilized like hell. I wanted to know a lot more about him until it was too late. He should’ve been a major factor in helping Constantine and Angela trying to problem solve, while also sticking his nose into their business when things between the two leads start heating up. I just felt like they got us excited for their partnership in the first twenty minutes but then we forgot about him for A WHILE. Even when Kramer and Constantine have some back and forth conversations that are supposed to be playful, showing Kramer’s enthusiasm for this type of work, Constantine doesn’t give him anything to play off of. As a result, almost every one of the early scenes between them falls flat. I should’ve had much more of a connection with the character by the third act, but he was given nothing to work with. The handling of Kramer was just piss poor. Side note, when they prepare for the final climactic battle and Chaz makes bullets for Constantine’s Holy Shotgun, he creates maybe twenty bullets. What sense does that make? Knowing they are about to face an army in this building, why would you only make a handful of bullets? This basically forces you to have to hit every target with one shot. If you miss, you’re fucked. You’d think they would decide to show up Rambo-style and hold a sheet of bullets across their chests before they even walk in the door, right? Neither guy has any superpower, so you would think they would be fully strapped up for battle.

No, he gives the man twenty or so bullets and thinks they’re chilling. What a fucking moron.

I wasn’t impressed by the look of the film either. It wasn’t worthy of the imaginative ideas and concepts coming from the world of John Constantine and the life he’s forced to live in. A more creative director and cinematographer with a vision was needed to bring this world to life in terms of presentation. This movie had no business dragging the way it did, considering how much was going on. The look of the film needed to be much more eye-popping to compliment this fruitful world of pure chaos.

The supporting cast of Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou, and Peter Stormare are all pretty good and very memorable but not in the film enough. Swinton in particular is detestable as Gabriel. She did a phenomenal job. Stormare, finally playing someone other than a villain from Eastern Europe, does a fine job as Lucifer. Though it’s a little short, it’s a harrowing performance you can’t forget, with a haunting look to accompany it. Actually, I’ll give a pass to Stormare’s screentime because his appearance wouldn’t mean as much had he been in the film earlier. I will also say that this time, the mixing of Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz really worked compared to 1996’s Chain Reaction. Their chemistry is a lot more apparent here and their characters’ vastly different personalities interacting with each other are fun to watch.

Mixing the horror genre with angels and demons can be a tough task, but if it pays off, it can be very entertaining. Constantine does pay off in spurts. It has a lot of cool moments, characters, and concepts due to the cast trying their hardest to make this very hard-to-do property an event worth watching. However, a lot of missteps drag the film away from its potential. In the future though, I hope this character is revisited because in the correct hands, this property’s capabilities are endless. Constantine barely sunk its teeth into what it could’ve been.

Fun Fact: Nicolas Cage was originally attached to play the character and you know what, Cage might have been perfect for it. Also, Michelle Monaghan originally had a much bigger role playing Constantine’s half-breed lover. Sadly, most of her scenes were cut, changing her role into a cameo.