Constantine
Supernatural thriller puts L.A. at Ground Zero in an apocalyptic battle

First, we'll address the Keanu Reeves thing.

One of the laziest, most useless things a critic can do is trot out the tired old "Keanu can't act" line. It's like some kind of boilerplate text they feel obligated to drag automatically into every single review. Before they even see the movie, they might create a file called "Keanu's New Movie" and drag the boilerplate in, just "working ahead."

Even the reviewers whose own work rarely rises above a collection of extremely banal observations do it; you know, the kind of reviewers whose immortal prose is along the lines of "'Insert Movie Name Here' is the best laugh out loud romantic comedy so far this year!!!!" (this in the first week of January; way to go, Nostradamus) — even those hacks feel qualified to dis Keanu. The irony is rich: writers who can't write whining about how "Keanu can't act."

Now, Keanu may not be the most versatile of actors; he doesn't disappear entirely into a role the way some actors are able to do, but that is not his job. When you consider how many far-fetched films Keanu has appeared in, Keanu's function is to provide a solid core around which the wild premises can coalesce; his job is to make us believe it.

In "Speed" for instance: consider the opening sequence as he calmly and fearlessly steps out onto some girders in an elevator shaft. With just a few deft strokes, Reeves has conveyed pretty much everything we need to know about his character: this guy is wired up a little differently, he does not experience fear in the same way that other people do. The entire rest of the movie — all of it, everything, all the goofball plot twists, EVERYTHING — depends on whether we believe Reeves' characterization; if we don't, the film simply can't progress from one ridiculous plot point to the next. If Reeves' character isn't committed to the idea that a bus actually can jump a huge gap in a freeway, there's not a chance in hell that the audience can buy it. Reeves keeps the film anchored, and it's a delicate job. One little aside, one knowing wink at the audience, and the game is up; the movie, like that bus should have, plummets down in flames.

So Reeves appears a bit stoic at times; his line readings aren't going to win an acting showdown with Ian McKellan, so what? He is still very good at what he does. When a critic cuts and pastes the standard boilerplate about how Reeves can't act, notice that they nearly always just leave it at that; they never really say what they would like to see from him instead.

In "Constantine" Reeves plays the titular character John Constantine, a freelance exorcist and unofficial soldier on the front lines of a battle between good and evil, God and Devil. Cursed, or blessed — depending on your outlook — since birth with the ability to see the half-breed demons and angels moving about all around us (full demons and angels are not allowed on Earth), he suffered greatly as a child, and as a teen, convinced he was hopelessly insane, he killed himself. A minute and a half later he was revived, pulling him back from what he already had considered to be an eternity in hell. Now, he puts his arcane knowledge to use in a constant struggle to regain his way into heaven by punishing the half-breed demons who disobey the rules and meddle unfairly in the lives of humans.

In other words, the character of John Constantine is completely preposterous, and Reeves once again steps in to lend a remarkable credibility to the part.

Personally — and I don't want to turn this into a big boring theological blah — I think that the chances that there exists, in this glorious universe we call home, some obsessed devil dude who spends his every waking thought on how to collect my soul for no other reason than that he can then inflict never-ending eternal torment on it, well, the chances of that being true are on the order of non-existent. It simply can't be worth the bother.

So while I think the universe of Constantine is hokum, for two hours Reeves convinced me to at least go along for the ride. His Constantine is a chain smoking, cynical, literally seen-it-all supernatural detective who never can quite mask his under core of hope that he can change his fate. He's equal parts stoic fatalist (he doesn't quit smoking even though he's dying of lung cancer) and hopeful hero who keeps trying even though he's been told many times, by the angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) no less, that it's a lost cause. When the cancer takes him, Gabriel assures him, he WILL be going back to the torments he escaped.

From his base in Los Angeles, Constantine gets wind of an upsurge in demonic activity. A simple exorcism goes wrong with the intrusion of a "soldier demon" trying to use the victim's body to "break into this world." Later, Constantine is attacked by a full-blood demon who has no business being out of hell. As he catalogs signs of a coming apocalypse, he is joined in his search by a police officer (Rachel Weisz) whose twin sister has recently killed herself, a death which provides a key clue to the apocalypse as well.

The film has a nice gritty mood to it, though I think the essential creepiness of many parts of L.A. was used to better advantage in the "Angel" TV series or, especially, David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." It was unclear to me, for instance, what the purpose of the neutral bar was. A place for the demi-demons and demi-angels to gather together without fighting? Why would they want or need to gather together in such a place? If they are gathering together, then some really weird crap should be going on there; things that would baffle normal human beings, things, perhaps, that only a demon or an angel can comprehend. As it is, the idea is largely unexplored.

There are other instances, too, like that throughout the film. Part of the reason that "Constantine" works is that the whole of the universe is not explained all the time. On the other hand, I often felt that ideas could have been taken a step further; if you've lived in L.A., you will know that Constantine's "secret" universe isn't all that underground. Humans in L.A can get up to plenty of weird stuff all on their own; "Constantine" should be providing glimpses into an underground, hidden world far beneath that world. There should be more things hiding in the shadows just at the edge of our vision. I guess what I'm saying is that I wanted the whole film to just be creepier, push at the boundaries.

Too, the vision of hell presented in the film seemed, well, ordinary. The verbal portrait Reeves paints when recalling his time there is far scarier than the hell shown — generic flames and lava — when he pays a visit there in the film. Then again, perhaps getting too graphic could just as easily have overbalanced the film's remaining elements. Still, I can't help thinking what "Constantine" might have been like if it was directed with the disgusting zeal of a Clive Barker or had aimed for the pervasive dread of "Angel Heart."

Based on the "Hellblazer" comic books (comic books? comic? what?!? my how times have changed since I was a kid), the film reportedly strays greatly from its source material, but I am not familiar with the books and so have nothing to say on that score. From my novice viewpoint, the story, character and situations seemed fairly well evolved; I enjoyed it for what it is.

For moviegoers who like a little walk on the dark side, without the grotesque grimness of a "Hellraiser" or Romero's "Night/Dawn/Day of the Living Dead" trilogy, "Constantine" delivers some creepy moments and is a more than satisfying entry in the genre.