Constantine

Synopsis: Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is cursed with the ability to see through the mortal forms that normally hide angelic and demonic beings from human perception. In his youth, he was overwhelmed by his visions and tried to take his own life.  Since then he has been trying to atone for his attempted suicide and to buy his way into heaven (a mortal sin in Catholicism) by destroying demons. Aided by a Los Angeles cop, Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), who can also see beyond the veil, Constantine sets out to prevent the greatest threat of all - the birth of the son of Satan.

Constantine could be summed up as The Exorcist meets The Big Sleep meets The Matrix with a touch of Raiders Of The Lost Ark thrown in for good measure. It is a conceptual ambitious hybridization married to the conventional traits of the megaplex action blockbuster -  the outsider male hero, the sexily décolleté dependent female, the sacrificial side-kick, the to-be-blown-away baddies, the hip one-liners and the de rigeur CGI effects. The storyline, based on the DC Comics series of "Hellblazer" graphic novels by Jamie Delano & Garth Ennis, is convoluted enough and the Biblical and occult references consistent enough as to keep one trying to follow the plot and see if there is any meaning to it, or if you are so disposed, as I suppose readers of graphic novels, doubtless the intended demographic are, to see meaning galore in it.

Keanu Reeves, in what in my books would be easily the best performance of his career, plays Bogey's Philip Marlowe, now a private exorcist in a black overcoat. He still has to crack his case and handle a slippery dame or two (with cigarette a dangling from his lips, of course) the main novelty being that the bad guys have the bothersome capacity of morphing into evil spirits.

I suspect that that is all there is to know and if you can hang onto Constantine's coat-tails as he battles evil that's enough but in the deep sense the film taps into our predisposition and need to believe that there is an explanation for why our world is the way it is and in a more immediate sense, it draws on the Judeo-Christian tradition of the battle between God and the Devil for the soul of Man to shape a different-enough-to-be-diverting cosmological film noir/action/horror/thriller movie.

If what is being said in this film is a sometimes confusing and occasionally a frustrating mix of weighty allusion and expedient glibness (the devil's offspring is named Mammon, Gabriel is a hipster archangel etc) then how it is said is much more impressive. Creating the finest post-noir noir world view I can recall since Blade Runner, the cinematography by Philippe Rousselot is wonderful, whilst the production design is sophisticated and the CGI effects, particularly the periodic visits to Hell, positively painterly.

First-time director Francis Lawrence earned his stripes in the music video business and his work here, whilst hardly a must-see for a serious-minded audience seeking dramatic engagement yet probably over-complicated for a simple-minded one seeking straightforward thrills and spills, is an example of skillful cinematic spectacle-making.

In the final analysis Constantine is quite a wearing affair both in terms of following the rollercoaster storyline and withstanding the intensely kinetic visuals but if graphic novel fantasy is your thing this will probably impress.

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