"Constantine"

I finally saw the ponderously delirious Catholic fantasy film with Keanu Reeves as a Philip Marlowe-style hard-boiled detective/exorcist who battles demons on the mean streets of noir LA.

A lot of people hated it. As a horror film, it's a failure since it lacks scary moments. Its pacing is stately at best, and its script is too congested with ideas to be intellectually interesting (although it's got some great hardbitten theological one-liners like, "God's a kid with an ant farm. There is no plan."

And it's fashionable to put down Keanu these days because of the failure of the last two "Matrix" movies, although that was hardly his fault.

But, for all its flaws, "Constantine" has style.

Catholicism just has more visual style than Protestantism. When you think of a Catholic sculpture, you think of, oh, say, Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Theresa." In contrast, the leading Protestant contribution to the art of sculpture is the Jello mold.

Everybody compares "Constantine" to "The Matrix," but it's much more in the tradition of "Blade Runner," another visually extravagant fantasy LA detective film noir. In contrast to "Constantine," "Blade Runner's" theological underpinnings were kept mostly under wraps until the climactic scene where Rutger Hauer's Christ-figure replicant drives a nail through his palm and then, as he dies, releases a white dove that flies up to a patch of heavenly blue sky. Not too subtle, but a lot of people still didn't get it. (Like me, the first time I saw it.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer