Senior management in hell -- after a long détente with heaven -- has decided to try a hostile takeover of the human plane.
The folks in hell think they can breach the gates that keep them in their fiery hole. If they succeed, it'll be hell on Earth.
Who can stop it? Not our Father who art in heaven -- he apparently watches humanity like a kid with an ant farm. Instead, John Constantine must thwart Satan and company.
That's the grand proposition in Constantine. And -- holy comic book adaptation! -- there's never been a movie quite like it.
Extracted from DC-Vertigo's Hellblazer series, Constantine draws from many of the standard sources -- superhero films, horror flicks, pulp fiction, metaphysical thrillers. But it also pulls heavily from an unexpected text: the Bible.
No big-budget action movie has ever taken such a matter-of-fact stance toward Judeo-Christian notions of the afterlife. Constantine uses CG to create a graphic vision of hell. The movie is filled with demons and angels, and Satan himself (played by Peter Stormare) even makes a notable appearance.
In the film, Constantine (played by Keanu Reeves) is no messiah, despite the initials. Part exorcist, part private detective, he's a gruff, chain-smoking misanthrope who knows what hell feels like. (He made a brief visit as a teen.)
Constantine's work has grown more urgent -- diagnosed with terminal cancer, he's spending his final days trying to earn a trip to heaven. So when the demons begin raiding Los Angeles, Constantine becomes a one-man border patrol, tracking them down and sending them south.
Constantine possesses strange gifts -- an ability to see beyond the mundane, mad skills at thrashing evil beings -- and has some unexpected helpers: a police officer (Rachel Weisz) investigating the suicide of her devout twin; a mad scientist of the occult (Max Baker) who works above a bowling alley; and a Catholic priest (Pruitt Taylor Vince).
Other central characters include Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale of the band Bush), an agent of Satan who tries to lure souls south, and the angelic Gabriel (Tilda Swinton), who works for the other team.
Constantine makes literal what many of us see as metaphor or abstraction. Hell is a real place. You'll go there if you misbehave. It's a startling narrative strategy, and it gives Constantine a bizarre edge that distinguishes it from typical saving-the-world movies.
Still, good high-concept ideas don't necessarily make for good entertainment (see The Day After Tomorrow and a couple hundred others), and Constantine has its problems. It's a bit convoluted, sometimes silly, inconsistent and in some ways generic.
But thanks to Reeves (who, like in The Matrix, seems to do less acting than just existing in front of the camera), the film's outlandish plot and some nifty effects, Constantine could become a cult favorite.
It's certainly not for everyone. Those with doubts about the afterlife might find Constantine hard to swallow. Director Francis Lawrence (whose background is music videos and, presumably, Sunday school) treats all the film's outlandish material as if it were everyday stuff. There's only a slight tinge of the kitschy.
And that's the right approach. In the Hellblazer series, the barriers between the mundane, heaven and hell are porous. That twist -- mixing the spectacular with the everyday -- is one element that makes comics so fun and compelling.
Constantine just takes it one step further, implicating all of creation.
It's not clear whether the devout will care much for the film -- its interpretation of biblical doctrine is unconventional, to say the least (Constantine takes the liberty of introducing us to a few new books of Ezekiel, for example).
And plenty of nonbelievers will find the central premise a bit off-putting, particularly because the politics -- a reversal from Hellblazer's lefty-Marxist ones -- are so conservative. In the world of Constantine, sin and you'll go to hell. No rebuttal.
But that's part of what makes Constantine so interesting. While Hollywood nearly always panders to viewers, this film implicates them. The afterlife is treated so seriously that even committed atheists might find themselves considering their own (perhaps) less-than-righteous ways.
Constantine doesn't give us much of a sense of heaven, but it spends lots of time in hell. It's no Club Med: The features include screeching, relentless demons; humans being torn apart piece by piece; high heat; and humidity.
It's scary! And convincing! And I'd like to write more about it, but I have to go repent now.
