CONSTANTINE

I am not a special Keanu Reeves fan. With a face sulpted not unlike that of the even worse Ben Affleck, he reminds me of that old MGM pretty boy, Robert Taylor. How he has got into projects with Bertolucci and Gus Van Sant is astounding. His acting range is beyond limited. He hasn't really changed that much from his stoney dude in the BILL AND TED movies.

These limitatiions do not work against him in his role as Constantine, a sort of demon detective, who, because he once committed suicide as a teenager, tries to redeem himself by sending whatever category of demon makes its way to Earth, right back to hell. Whatever! He projects so little sexual intgerest that when the lovely Rachel Weisz asks whether she needs to take all of her clothes off in order to submerge herself in a tub so that she might regain her contact with "the other side", he says she can keep her clothes on.

The film is a little bit like THE EXORCIST meets THE SIXTH SENSE, and, incoherence aside, it's not bad to look at. I didn't make it all the way to end because somewhere in the middle, a lot of exposition was starting to creep in, the sort of spycho/spiritual babble that made THE MATRIX movies so leaden. Here, Reeves takes on some of the Lawrence Fishburne pompositiy from those movies. Yet, here, Reeves works. He's singe minded, and his wardrobe, consisting of his suit with a tie undone, matches the range of his acting