March 3rd, 2005

Constantine may sound like part three of a toga-and-sandals trilogy consisting of Troy and Alexander, but it looks like somebody just threw up on a pizza. Nothing to do with history (or the bastardizing of it); everything to do with indigestible Gen-X garbage. The director of this gibberish, music-video hack Francis Lawrence, has heaped everything on: space film, war film, monster film, cowboy film, horror film, a spoof of the Alien franchise here, a ripoff of Mad Max over there, all in the shape of a gory, incomprehensible Hellblazer action novel for mental retards from 12 to 30.
  It’s junk cinema at its most revolting and although it will never win any Oscars or find its way into any Michelin movie guides, it fills those spaces where nobody can hear you scream, but everybody can hear you laugh. I couldn’t tell you what Constantine is about if you held a gun to my head. Something to do with the “Spear of Destiny,” the weapon that killed Jesus, which has been missing since World War II. No explanation of where it was for 1,900 years before that. Anyway, the movie is all about the search for this “Spear of Destiny”—who has it, who kills to get it, who dies to keep it. Satanism and witchcraft are the themes that drag you handcuffed from one horror to the next, in a Los Angeles setting populated by angels and monsters from central casting called “half breeds,” who roam the city in human disguise.
  With all the energy and animation of a brain-dead mollusk, Keanu Reeves stares his way through the title role of John Constantine, a chain-smoking exorcist who is sort of like a vampire hunter, except that he specializes in demons who jump out of people’s throats, abdomens, and lymph glands to chew their way through the planet. John’s job is to deport these carnivores back to Hell. John has already been in Hell himself, so he knows about the dark side. Now he’s dying of lung cancer—apparently this a sin invented by Satan that guarantees all smokers an eternity of unimaginable torture and madness in the next world.
  When John isn’t coughing blood into the sink in nauseatingly detailed close-ups, he’s verbally sparring with the angel Gabriel, depicted as a drag queen and played by Tilda Swinton in a pin-striped suit. What any of this has to do with that goddamned “Spear of Destiny” is anybody’s guess. Meanwhile, John is joined on his quest by a freaked-out wacko lady cop (Rachel Weisz) whose twin sister jumps off the roof of an insane asylum, and by his apprentice-sidekick, a California cab driver with a Brooklyn accent who plays Robin to his Batman.
  All of them are looking for the “scavengers of the dead,” who cause power outages and crash from the sky, dripping blood and wreaking havoc on Hollywood. Djimon Hounsou, the Oscar-nominated actor from Jim Sheridan’s wonderful film In America, drifts in and out as a sort of gangster named Midnite, whose disco is a “neutral” space where neither demons nor angels can enter. The only thing that can shock Constantine into contact with the mysterious “Spear of Destiny” is Midnite’s prized possession—the electric chair that killed 200 people in Sing Sing!
  None of this makes one word of sense. All you can do is enjoy the special effects that have turned Los Angeles into a black menace of fossilized aliens from Dante’s Inferno. Water figures into this confusion soup. Constantine is always trying to get people wet, because water is a common conduit that “lubricates the body from one plane to another.” Nothing scary every happens, but the cornball flamboyance and exploding bathtubs will keep you in hysterics. It all leads up to the arrival of Lucifer, who lights Keanu Reeves’ last cigarette and chews enough scenery to die of asbestos poisoning. (Lucifer is Peter Stormare in a white ice-cream suit, rolling his eyes, flicking his tongue at Keanu Reeves’ neck and nipples like a cross between Bela Lugosi and Truman Capote.)
  This is the worst acting I have seen on the screen since Harpo Marx played Sir Isaac Newton in The Story of Mankind. Even a comic book should be rooted in some kind of basic morality, tension, and believability. Even Superman was a hero for obvious reasons. Constantine is just lurid, tasteless, and stupid. The evil forces John Constantine battles are ludicrous and irrelevant, and he can’t even fly. The Devil wants him because of his three-pack-a-day habit, but instead of being stabbed, diced, chopped, electrocuted, drowned, burned, and dropped from the tops of buildings to fight off the forces of Hell in the most bone-crunching assaults without a Band-Aid, wouldn’t it be a lot easier, safer, and cheaper to try a pack of Nicorette gum?