9 / 10
Constantine is a better film than its reputation suggests. Francis Lawrence directed in his feature debut. Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine, the chain-smoking occult detective from Vertigo Comics’ Hellblazer series. Rachel Weisz plays Detective Angela Dodson and her twin sister Isabel. Tilda Swinton plays the angel Gabriel. Peter Stormare plays Lucifer. Djimon Hounsou plays Papa Midnite. Shia LaBeouf plays Constantine’s apprentice. The film made approximately two hundred and thirty million dollars worldwide on a hundred-million-dollar budget but underperformed against studio expectations. It has been quietly reassessed upward in the twenty years since release.
The Hellblazer purists hated the film. The comic-book Constantine is a blond British working-class con artist. The film Constantine is dark-haired American Keanu Reeves. The casting was the main reason fans rejected the film. The casting also turned out to work on its own terms once you accept the film as an adaptation rather than as a faithful reproduction. The performance is one of Reeves’s best in the genre register he has spent his career in.
The Visual Identity
The film has a strong visual identity that almost no other comic adaptation of the period had. Los Angeles is reimagined as a hot, dirty, ash-stained backdrop where heaven and hell have been waging proxy wars for centuries. The cinematography is grim and yellow-tinged. The hell sequences are constructed from real Los Angeles locations subjected to wind-and-fire treatment. The visual coherence is the work of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot and production designer Naomi Shohan.
Francis Lawrence had directed music videos before this film. The visual style shows the influence. Every frame is composed. The lighting is dramatic. The film commits to its aesthetic in ways that more conventional adaptations did not. The result feels like its own world even when the script is borrowing from familiar Catholic-horror conventions.
For Writers
A strong visual identity can elevate familiar genre material. Constantine’s plot has the standard occult-thriller architecture. The visual treatment makes the familiar feel specific. The lesson is that originality at the conceptual level is harder than originality at the textural level. Genre conventions can be inhabited rather than rejected. The texture of how you treat them is where your work’s identity lives. Spend energy on texture.
The Cast
Reeves’s performance is calibrated for the role. Constantine is exhausted, dying of lung cancer, and very tired of being the only person who can do his job. Reeves plays him as a man who has stopped caring about whether anyone likes him and stopped caring about whether he likes himself. The flat affect that has made Reeves the subject of decades of jokes is exactly correct for this character.
Tilda Swinton’s Gabriel is the production’s strangest casting choice and one of its best. She plays the archangel as an androgynous bureaucrat who has been responsible for too much human suffering and is now actively plotting to bring on the apocalypse to clean up the world. The performance is genuinely unsettling. Peter Stormare arrives in the third act as Lucifer in a white suit with tar dripping from his bare feet and steals every scene he is in. The performances anchor the film’s serious commitment to its theology.
For Writers
Casting choices that look wrong on paper can become the production’s signature if the actor commits to a specific interpretation. Tilda Swinton playing a male-presenting archangel was an unconventional choice that turned into one of the most memorable performances in 2000s genre cinema. The lesson is that obvious casting often produces obvious performances. Counterintuitive casting produces the chance for something specific. The risk is real. The upside is real too.
The Theology
The script takes its Catholicism seriously. The cosmology is specific. God and Lucifer have a wager about humans. Angels and demons cannot influence humans directly. They can only whisper. Constantine’s job is to deal with the half-breeds who have crossed over and broken the rules. His suicide attempt as a teenager damned his soul. He is trying to earn his way back into heaven by fighting on the right side, which he gradually realizes is not really how the system works.
The final scenes, in which Constantine tricks Lucifer into preventing Mammon’s escape from hell and into reviving him from a moment of pulmonary failure, are theologically rigorous within the film’s stated rules. The trick works because the film has been laying the rules out across the runtime. Constantine wins by understanding the system better than the antagonists. This is a more satisfying climax than most comic adaptations achieve.
For Writers
Fantasy and supernatural fiction need clear rules even when the rules cannot be empirically verified. Constantine spends its runtime establishing how its cosmology works. The third act resolution depends on those rules. The audience trusts the resolution because they have been taught the system. The lesson is that internal consistency is the foundation of supernatural fiction. The rules can be anything. The rules have to be consistent. Cheat on the rules and the audience knows.
Craft Note
Francis Lawrence directed in his feature debut. Kevin Brodbin and Frank Cappello wrote, based on DC/Vertigo’s Hellblazer comic created by Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, and John Totleben. Keanu Reeves as John Constantine. Rachel Weisz as Angela and Isabel Dodson. Tilda Swinton as Gabriel. Peter Stormare as Lucifer. Djimon Hounsou as Papa Midnite. Shia LaBeouf as Chas. Klaus Badelt and Brian Tyler composed the score. Released February 2005. Approximately one hundred million dollar budget. Two hundred and thirty million worldwide gross.
The Verdict
9/10. The most underrated occult thriller of its decade. Reeves is correctly cast against type expectations. Swinton and Stormare are exceptional in their limited screen time. The visual world is distinctive. The theology is rigorous. The film has been reassessed upward over twenty years and deserves the reassessment. A sequel has been announced for years and may eventually arrive.
FAQ
Is it faithful to the comics?
No. The character of Constantine is fundamentally different from the Hellblazer version. The setting is moved from London to Los Angeles. The casting is American rather than British. As an adaptation, it is loose.
Is the comic better?
The comic is a different kind of work. Hellblazer is an episodic horror book that ran for thirty years. The film is a two-hour standalone. They are doing different things in different formats.
Is there a sequel?
Announced repeatedly. Production has been delayed multiple times. As of writing, the sequel is still in some form of development with Keanu Reeves attached.
Who is Peter Stormare?
Swedish actor best known for Fargo (1996) as Gaear Grimsrud. His Lucifer in Constantine is a five-minute scene that is more memorable than most films’ entire runtimes.
How does it compare to other Keanu Reeves genre films?
Better than most. The Matrix trilogy is the standard. Constantine is in the second tier alongside John Wick.
Why did it underperform commercially?
The marketing did not know how to sell it. The R-rated occult horror is darker than the trailers suggested. The Hellblazer fan base rejected the casting. The film was caught between audiences.
Should I watch this?
Yes. Especially if you missed it in theaters.