My review of "Constantine"

I remember seeing the trailers for Constantine back in 2005. It seemed like an interesting movie but I never got the chance to watch it. I've had several chances to watch this film but there was always something that got in the way. Fortunate for me there's this thing called Netflix started streaming this movie 15 years after it came out. After finally getting to watch this movie, I can say I understand why some people liked it so much.

The movie starts with a sort of exorcism and John Constantine, played by Keanu Reeves, happens to be the exorcist. He exorcises a woman and something weird happens and I guess this triggered him to believe something big is about to happen.

Then it cuts to another scene somewhere in the south where some random person gains crazy powers from wielding some magical dagger of some sort. The movie only gets more complicated from there. A police detective by the name of Angela, played by Rachel Weisz, has a twin that had mysteriously committed suicide. The twin was in a mental ward so nobody thinks the wiser.

Somehow all of these random turn of events all link together due to an eternal war between heaven and hell. This I thought was rather interesting. The world they live in is divided into three realms: heaven, the living and hell. Apparently god and the devil have waged some war against each other and they've sent beings such as angels and demons to influence people in the living. The problem is that someone has overstepped their boundaries and has made a disturbance between good and evil.

It's interesting because you can see a few situations that I guess are somewhat hidden social messages throughout the movie. Something fun for audience members to re-watch the movie to learn different meaning.

The special effects are really good if you realize that this movie came out in 2005. I would even say that the effects are more artistic than to impress people on the realistic level. This is probably why the special effects survived the test of time.

For the most part I liked the acting by most of the actors. The problem is that Keanu Reeves seems really wooden in this movie. I don't know if it's the dialogue or the way he delivers the lines but they just don't feel right. He makes the lines sound pretty corny in certain scenes. I guess a lot of people complain about his acting for this same reason but it's really apparent in this movie. Lucifer played by Peter Stormare kind of even makes his character seem a little too campy. These little things kind of ruin the experience of the movie.

The mood of the film is really broken because of the uneven acting. I can tell that it's supposed to be a moody and serious movie from start to finish but some of the acting can at times makes this movie feel like a B-movie.

I was still able to enjoy the film though. There's a lot to like about the movie if you're able to get over some of the acting. I think a lot of people really liked this movie for the ideas behind it. Like I said before, there are a ton of cool concepts in here and I can see this being a TV series. I believe this story eventually became a TV series back in 2014. It's actually based on a comic book series called Hellblazer. I haven't read Hellblazer or seen the TV series so I can't really give you any comparison review.

Overall, I really liked the concept of the movie. It had a ton of interesting ideas that kept me watching and interested in the movie. There were a few acting or dialogue issues that I had that really threw me out of the viewing experience but I was able to get over some of them because I was invested in the idea of the movie. I'll have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. It was a good one time viewing and I would say that it's okay to recommend but I wouldn't be saying it's a great movie or anything. It's a light recommend just because of the ideas in the movie.