God's Own Devil

break on through: Keanu Reeves shoots for the heavens.

Keanu Reeves' Constantine is a damned soul working for the man upstairs.

by Cindy Fuchs

John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is in between. For one thing, he resents the hell out of his ostensible gift, namely, the ability to see half-breed demons and angels as they manifest on earth. Because he didn't know this was a gift when he was a kid, he panicked, thought he was miserably insane, and killed himself. For a couple of minutes, anyway. Brought back, he still counts as a suicide, which means he can't get into heaven. And, oh yes, he's been smoking for some 30 years, which means he's got a powerful lung cancer, a wracking cough and a sickly demeanor, as he teeters between life and death. All this makes Constantine mad. He's a grumpy action hero for the Lord.

Based on the character from the Hellblazer comics, Constantine is all about such in-betweenness. The fact that he's played by the ethereal, boyish/girlish, Ted-Buddha-Neo-affiliated Reeves grants him a peculiar mix of affects. Part hero and part rampaging fury, part blue-collar tough and part divine avenger, he's made it his mission to send other in-betweeners, those demons who make it to earth, directly to hell. Such policing of the boundaries — demons and angels are both supposed to stay in their designated realms according to an agreement that dates at least as far back as Paradise Lost — makes John a worker for God, but also, in his way, for the devil. Both make claims on his time, energy and soul.

His midpoint status is underlined when John is called in to perform an exorcism on a girl who's been crawling on the ceiling and spitting obscenities at her God-fearing mother. He arrives looking surly, straddles the child and whispers demon-be-gone commands in her ear. She contorts and spasms, they wrestle and kick, the demon emerges in a rush and crashes out the window, leaving John in something like a post-coital daze, sucking on a cigarette as he makes his way back to eager sidekick Chas (Shia LaBeouf).

John still can't rest. As he puts it, "That exorcism wasn't right." Indeed, it appears that this demonic manifestation is part of a recent trend of evil pushing its way to earth, enabled by the discovery of the "Spear of Destiny" (stuck in Christ's side at the crucifixion, passed on through other evil sorts over the years, and until this film, apparently, buried in a Nazi flag in Mexico). Today's carrier is a Mexican "scavenger" (Jesse Ramirez) who, once possessed of the spear, turns spastic and brutish, making his way across the U.S. border (essentially, the worst nightmare version of an "illegal alien"), mindlessly determined to make contact with Detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), whose part in all this has to do with her dead, psychic twin sister Isabel (also played by Weisz). Of course, Angela seeks John's help: Officially, the sister killed herself by jumping from an asylum's roof, but watching surveillance tapes, Angela hears Isabel call Constantine's name before she leaps.

John reluctantly takes up the cause, which leads to encounters with other in-betweeners — Satan's minion, the half-human Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale); God's emissary, the half-human Gabriel (Tilda Swinton); the alcoholic Father Hennessy (Pruitt Taylor Vince); and cagey spiritual power-broker Midnite (Djimon Hounsou, again playing something of the Magical Negro, helping John to achieve his eventually noble end). None trusts John, but all respect (even envy, perversely) his gift which is also, yes, a curse.

While the humans resent the deity-imposed dilemma of fate and free will, as well as all the work they have to do for a chance at eternal salvation, the half-breeds have their own grudges to cultivate. Balthazar is a jaunty, even dapper sort, but Gabriel is doomy and profound concerning the "detente" that assigns demons and angels to separate realms, with everyone else scrambling for position.

Accusing John of "trying to buy his way into heaven" by sending damned souls to their rightful place, Gabriel advises John of his own unsaved condition: "You're going to hell you're fucked." Undeterred by threats (he's heard 'em all), John endeavors to help Angela, and Satan still yearns for John's soul, payback for repeatedly messing up his plans to infiltrate the human population with embodied evils.

The inevitable showdown brings together the disparate pieces of this spiritual puzzle, including Satan (whose late appearance comes as the perfectly cast, ghastly pale Peter Stormare), and threatens that precious balance outrageously. Constantine is uneven, the rhythms and effects reeling from decent to silly. Without Hellboy's thick skin, the Dark Knight's gadgety ingenuity, or Spidey's romantic energy, John is burdened by physical pains and moral vulnerabilities as well as his looming spiritual morass. Doubting his mission and his faith even as he's consumed by them, he is, perhaps strangely, an achingly topical comic book/movie hero. His ambiguity makes sense in a world where certainty just seems scary.

Constantine Directed by Francis Lawrence A Warner Bros. release Opens Friday at area theaters recommended