Movies That Should Have Been Better: Constantine

[lifeonqueen]

There's a moment, when the ArchAngel Gabriel tells John Constantine that he's "going to die young because you smoked 30 cigarettes a day from the time you were 15 and you're going to hell for the life you took - you're fucked" that the movie comes close to pulling it together. Despite resetting the quintessentially British, Thatcher-era tale of demons and religuous disillusionment in LA and despite casting Keanu Reeves as the Sting-inspired John Constantine, in that moment, the movie has the corrosively cynical, bitter sensibility of faith betrayed found at the heart of the original material within its grasp. It pisses it away, of course, and ends by inflicting a final indignity on the audience as the character conceived as the archtypal unrepentant prick attempts to mend his ways as the screen fades to black.

So close. But no cigarette. Fuckers.