Movie Review - "Constantine"

Most people who are seeing the trailer for "Constantine" on TV have no clue (nor do they care) that this movie is really based (loosely) on a DC-Vertigo comic book called "Hellblazer." Nor do they care that the main character, John Constantine, was created in the image and personality of the musician Sting and is about a renegade occultist who has been to hell and is now back on earth with some not so pleasant tasks to accomplish. Nope - people care about the newest Keanu Reeves film and whether or not it'll be something along the lines of "Neo from the Matrix goes to Hell and back."

In this film, the main character, Constantine, teams up with a skeptical policewoman (played by Rachel Weisz) to solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister. The investigation takes them into a world of demons and angels that exists virtually unseen within the world of everyday Los Angeles. Sounds like an interesting premise at least right? Well, I'm a comic book geek to a point and I was VERY leery of seeing this film. I happened to have attended the sneak preview of it with some friends who are NOT comic book fans and it turns out that all of us enjoyed it!

I was not looking forward to watching Keanu attempt to play the character as he is straight out of the comics simply because it's a very well known person that this character is based on and it's very hard for a younger, non-English, non-blonde man to carry off playing Sting. I should not have worried. The screen writers did a great job with keeping the feeling of the character by direction and (especially) by dialog that was very fitting to the character as I'd come to know him from the printed page. More so, some of the visuals were lifted directly out of the comic books and as such were a delight to witness. There were just stunning visuals in many places. What about the story itself? There were liberties taken with the story, just as they were taken with the character, but all in all it seemed to work really well. But what about those who weren't familiar with the story? Well they enjoyed it simply because the dialog was amusing (great, dry one-liners) and because the visuals were engaging.

Not a serious "film" by any means - but as a movie to spend a couple hours watching? I'd say it's a "spend the money on the ticket" sort of movie if you like fantastical story lines and don't have too much of a problem with viewing some disturbing images on film. This is not a movie I'd take young teens to, though, simply because some of the imagery might be disturbing and definitely don't rent this when the young ones are around to watch. It was a fun time that I didn't expect - I honestly was thinking it would be just awful and figured that at least that would give those of us in attendance something to make fun of at dinner later. If you are a comic book purist you'll hate it, however - so be warned.