Last night, I was out with friends and we decided to make an impromptu trip to the movies to see the new movie 'Constantine'. The movie, which stars Keanu Reeves & Rachel Weisz, is based on the little-known comic book 'Hellblazer'. Reeves plays the main character, John Constantine, who is a supernatural detective of sorts. While I am not usually a fan of the comic book genre of movies, the trailer for this looked pretty interesting and not cheesy and contrived like most comic book movies these days (like the Spiderman movies).

Unfortunately, the movie did not quite meet up to my expectations. While it was much better than most comic book movies, which I believe was helped by the part that it was a lesser known one and therefore did not have legions of fans with preconceived notions of the characters, it was not a great movie. The basic premise is that there is an ever raging war between heaven and hell for the souls of the living (stay with my here), and there are certain spirits here on Earth who sometimes go to far in influencing where a person is going to end up. This is where Constantine steps in. When a spirit gets out of line and is no longer "fair and balanced", he sends them back to where they belong. I know it sounds a little Ghostbuster-like, but it's not. The movie has a very dark theme and some really interesting backdrops. The plot was interesting, but it did drag at points and took way too much explanation which the writers sort of did a decent job of bringing forward without resorting to having a narrator or characters talking to the camera. Reeves turned in a decent performance and was not limited to the one-word phrases many people associate him with. So overall, it was an entertaining movie, but did not quite live up to my expectations. I would rate it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.

This entry was posted by Brad, on Saturday, February 26, 2005. You can leave your response.