So yeah. We just watched Constantine. It's spotty as, well, as Hell. Which is where I'm going for writing that.
There were some things that I thought were brilliant, like the exorcism at the beginning. It had the whole feeling of garage magic that's in the comic. This was all making me think about how Los Angeles was such a good setting considering the large latin-catholic community. But then the movie shot off in another direction! Then another! Then we had some bad dialogue and some corny camera and scene work! Then something really cool happened! Then something that only a committee would think was really cool happened!
Seriously, it was all over the fucken place. It was like they were throwing cool shit up against some film and not caring what stuck. I liked some of the things they did with the character. In the comics Constantine is doomed to hell not because of suicide, but because he's a real fucken bastard. I guess that wouldn't have worked for a movie and I agree with them changing it. The cancer story, which is the basis of the whole story the movie seems to have been taken from, is reduced to a postscript, which I hated. In the movie he's genuine about wanting redemption, in the comic he's screwing with things he doesn't really understand in order to save his arse from burning. And them there's the scene where he blows a room full of demons away with a gun, I mean what the fuck? And he beats another demon in a fist fight.
And I dunno if it's Keanu but all the actors were fucking brilliant. Except Keanu. And then, and then, and then. Yeah, the movie's a goddamn five year old trying to explain a bank robbery and it's more interested in the the gun fire and the speeding cars than the tension that's going on between the criminals, the police and the hostages.
The tattoos, though... that was just plain fucken stupid.