Constantine
Sunday, June 1, 2008
“Hell wants him. Heaven won’t take him. Earth needs him.”
We’ve seen Constantine so many times, I’ve lost count. It’s not often a movie comes along like this one. Just so cool and creepy and fun. I have to preface this by saying that I wasn’t a Keanu Reeves fan until the Matrix movies, and after seeing him on Leno, watching him in an interview. Seeing him talking outside of ‘acting’, I realized that what I took for his lack of acting, was just his… accent…? Or just the way he talks in general. It’s different from other actors and once I figured that out, it didn’t bother me anymore. I also read about some tragic stuff he’s been through and I guess I related to him more because of it. You can see it in his eyes… [but I digress... again...]
So, Constantine. It’s brilliant. It’s based on the DC/Vertigo comic book character in HellBlazer. A man born with the ability to see the ‘half breeds’ that walk among us from both heaven and hell. He’s a tragic character because this ability drove him to take his own life when he was a teenager. He was revived after being dead for 2 minutes, but they felt like a lifetime… in hell. So he’s spent his life since then trying to get back into God’s good graces…
I really hope they do a sequel to this movie. The cast is awesome. Rachael Weisz is fantastic [I'm a big fan of hers], Shia LaBeouf is great as the sidekick… Tilda Swinton is amazing as the androgenous ‘Gabriel’… Djimon Hounsou as the shaman ‘Pappa Midnight’… even Gavin Rosedale as the demon ‘Balthazar’ is fun. They couldn’t have picked a better Satan with Peter Stormare ['Lev' from Armageddon, among other roles - we call him 'DRM' or 'dirty Russian man... because he plays a lot of generic dirty Russians...].
The visual effects were really great… they didn’t just do what was expected. They put their own twist on hell and demons, etc. I had never read the comic books, but this story is really well done, considering everything that had to pull from.
If you like supernatural horror with religous themes, you’ll love this. And if you can see it in HD, do it. It’s stunning. This movie is a 4 out of 5 and I know we’ll be watching it many more times. It holds a spot in the favorites pile that we go back to when there’s nothing on TV. We never get tired of it.
~ HELENA
Add’l Info: Released: Feb 18, 2005 • Runtime: 121 minutes • Rated R for violence and demonic images
