Best Keanu: “God’s a kid with an ant farm. He’s not planning anything.”

The first time I watched Constantine, I was annoyed that the filmmakers took a perfectly good movie and ruined it by introducing the male gaze about an hour in. I’m talking about the bath scene, where Keanu holds Rachel Weisz underwater so she can regain her psychic abilities and rescue her sister from hell.

Weisz is dressed in a thin white shirt and black bra, she gets wet, and stays that way for a bit. She walks to the domain of Beeman with insight into how he died, the camera focused on her soaked-through shirt and half bra. Yeah, she was distracted by getting sudden visions I suppose. But she had a jacket. She could have put it back on.

Her character was already not believable as a cop — she’s too timid and seems a bit overwhelmed by the demon-hunting going on. Maybe overwhelmed isn’t the right word. She follows John Constantine like she’s his assistant and, with the exception of looking at the surveillance video from her sister’s death, does none of her own investigation.

But the second time around, I decided that the bigger problem with Constantine is that the story loses steam. The setup in the first hour is fantastic. The movie looks cool. John Constantine is a compelling character whom you want to understand more deeply. His story is the one we’re really interested in — not this trite plot of demon babies or whatever it was.

I loved Keanu in this movie. I’ve seen about 20 Keanu films at this point, and I like his performance in this better than almost any of the others — that includes Speed, Point Break, Matrix, and a couple of independent works. I still want to hold up John Wick as my favorite, but I don’t know — if Constantine were a better movie overall, this might top my list.

It’s a transition to an old(er) Keanu I think, which I prefer to watch to the young(er) Keanu. This character also has an interesting back story with a compelling internal conflict. He’s motivated not exactly by his own salvation — but more by his fear of going back to hell (and staying there). John Constantine is a particular kind of anti-hero who’s doing the right things, but only to help himself.

Constantine has all the elements that I would typically look for in a movie. The visuals are (mostly) appealing. There’s a supernatural element that makes you question the logic of a specific mainstream religion — what strange things some of us are taught to believe. There are some interesting characters. But the women are afterthoughts and the plot is ultimately confusing and boring.

Interesting casting note — Lucifer is played by Peter Stormare, who also played Abram Tarasov in John Wick Chapter 2. He’s the guy in the office you see at the beginning, offering a nice transition from John Wick O.G. In that scene, John Wick pours them drinks and proposes peace.

“Can a man like you know peace?” Tarasov asks John Wick.

For John Constantine, perhaps that’s the core question as well. If they ever do revisit this character on film, I hope this is the question they choose to explore, and not get distracted by growing demons in wombs and burning skin with holy water.

March 2022