Title: Constantine (2005)Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LeBeouf
Directed By: Francis Lawrence
Constantine is based on the Vertigo Hellblazer comics. Now granted, a lot of comic adaptations have some changes made to them to be more bankable as a film. In the comics; John Constantine is older, British and damned to spend eternity in Hell for contributing to the death of a little girl when he was younger. In the movie; John is younger, American, and damned to spend eternity in Hell because he once tried to kill himself. These trivial changes wouldn't normally spell big problems for the movie, except that here John Constantine is Keanu Reeves. That's all. Keanu Reeves being a Keanu Reeves character in another freakin' Keanu Reeves movie.
Reeves is often criticized for his acting, and I hate to pour gasoline on the fire, but it has to be pointed out how poor his performance is here. He can't even smoke right! He's supposed to be playing a cynical chain smoker dying of lung cancer. But every time he lights up, he looks like an awkward teenager who stole one of Daddy's butts from the ashtray to give it a try. The character is meant to be smoking most of the movie, yet whenever he does it looks distractingly bad. Keanu just can not pull it off. It's one of the movie's biggest flaws.
Other than Keanu not knowing how to smoke, the rest of the cast is par. Some good, some bad. Rachel Weisz is pretty alright as our female protagonist and potential love interest. Shia LeBeouf does his "annoying but faithful sidekick" thing that he's done in I, Robot and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Djimon Hounsou is almost wasted here as Papa Midnite, but gets to be a little more of his charming self later in the movie. Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare are both terrible and might as well be screaming "lookitme lookitme!" with their borderline silly performances. Basically, I don't think any of them are going to put this on their resume demo reels.
Actors aside, what we're left with is pretty much what you'd expect from a flashy Hollywood comic book movie. This could have been Spawn, or Ghost Rider, or Judge Dredd. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either. The whole thing was just (as usual with these types of movies) "meh".
Score: 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment