Constantine

My last two DC movies (Constantine and Catwoman) both showed up on HBO Max recently, so now I can finally finish this mess of a movie universe. I almost started Catwoman first, but figured I’d save what I think is the most widely mocked DC movie of all time for last. I saw Constantine back in the 2000’s when it first came out, and probably more than once. I thought it was pretty good back then, but it has slid a bit since then.

Constantine is a mostly fine, supernatural slash action slash horror movie. The biggest problem I have is the amount of exposition required to explain everything, as there is an entire war between good and evil being fought and some set of rules about the conflict and world. The runtime is short, so the solution the director came up with is to just have characters make long, strange explanations on a regular basis.

It’s hard for any of the actors to look amazing when given such nonsense dialogue, but Reeves, Swinton and Weisz do a pretty good job. Reeves is surprisingly good as a dislikeable protagonist, which is strange because he normally succeeds because he’s so naturally likeable. The characters are, other than Reeves, mostly underdeveloped (like Weisz) or lackluster translations of comic book characters (Hounsou).

The movie is an easy but forgettable watch, and is overall a fine movie. It gets a 5.