Richard Crouse

Every ten years or so Keanu Reeves makes a movie where he battles the devil. In 1997 he starred in The Devil’s Advocate in which he played a lawyer employed by Lucifer and now in Constantine he plays the title character, a chain-smoking supernatural detective who patrols the border between heaven and hell in an adaptation of the Hellblazer comics. Doomed to hell when he dies for a mortal sin he committed as a young man he battles demons on earth to earn his way into heaven.

I was a little confused by the movie’s mumbo-jumbo mythology, and I don’t think I was alone. Keanu has kind of a blank look on his face throughout the film that might imply that he didn’t really get it either. For a movie that is about large concepts like good and evil the film seems a little restrained—the action sequences never really take off; much of the CGI is video game fake and the occasional funny line seems out of place.