I know now this was based on a comic character. Looked into that. It’s kinda like Hellboy, but human. The guy is Kind of a dick. Cool character, given the premise. This movie isn’t exactly that character, I don’t think. As a stand-alone film, this is actually a decent supernatural horror thriller kind of thing. As an adaptation? I don’t know the Constantine character that well, but if it’s about as accurate as the director did with that Will Smiff I Am Legend adaptation, well... Seriously, dude. How can you fuck up that softball?!? But the big question is, it looks like Lawrence gets to finally tackle the Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) story The Long Walk coming out here at the end of 2025, how is he going to handle that? Lawrence also did majority of The Hunger Games series, which in retrospect has many of the same themes. So he has practice. Let’s just hope he doesn’t blaspheme it like he did with Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Seriously. The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man already bastardized it, why would you do the same?!? Stick to the Fucken Story! So simple. Ok. Back to the movie at hand.
John Constantine, kind of a supernatural Private Investigator. Sometimes exorcist, sometimes séance bro, always chain smoking. But things seem to be getting a bit more evil lately. And a local L.A. detective who just lost her sister to suicide gets tied up into the escalatin shit-show. It’s...not going well for the human side of things as craziness of biblical proportions plays out.
Again, whatever source material aside, this actually does set up a good stand-alone supernatural action movie. Yeah yeah yeah, I know I’m a hypocrite when considering what I just said about Richard Matheson adaptations, but that wasn’t a comic book so piss off. Decent characters here, good drama and pacing, cool effects. Keanu does okay as the character I guess, maybe he is the weakest link here in that regard. The supporting actors are all pretty good in their respective roles, particularly Peter Stormare as he chews through his scenery with such relish.
