Between heaven and hell

Keanu Reeves hasn’t had his fill of saving the world, apparently.

After vanquishing the ghosts in the “Matrix’s” machine, Mr. Reeves struggles to keep heaven and hell in their respective corners in “Constantine.”

The film, drawn from the DC Comics/Vertigo Hellblazer series, casts the notoriously wooden actor as a demon hunter with a terminal case of lung cancer.

Doesn’t sound like your daddy’s comic book, does it?

Nor is first-time director Francis Lawrence just another MTV video graduate. Mr. Lawrence paints on an ambitious palette here, rendering images of hellfire as toxic as any we’ve seen before. He even wrangles one of the better performances from Mr. Reeves, who is growing into, if not a fine actor, one whose control over his physicality renders his modest technique moot.

“Constantine” opens in Mexico, where a worker uncovers a relic known as the Spear of Destiny during a routine excavation. The subsequent set piece is a stunner, quickly followed by an equally audacious scene introducing us to John Constantine (Mr. Reeves), exorcist for hire.

The vicious exorcism, a sign that Earth-bound demons are getting closer to revealing themselves, and the Spear’s reappearance aren’t isolated incidents. That grim reality is complicated by the news that Constantine’s chronic smoking has led to inoperable lung cancer.

Faced with not only death but everlasting pain ” our hero’s suicide attempt years earlier punched his ticket to hell ” Constantine vows to preserve the balance between good and evil with his remaining breaths.

Besides, he figures that if he does a bang-up job the good Lord might rethink his final destination.

His mission gets complicated when he runs into Angela (Rachel Weisz), a cop mourning the apparent suicide of her twin sister (also Miss Weisz). The actress, an asset any comic book translation would be lucky to have, brings the best out of both Mr. Reeves and the film itself.

Constantine doesn’t have much time left to redeem his soul and walk Angela through her sister’s death for closure. But Angela may be closer to Constantine than she realizes, making their teaming more than just a romantic tease.

“Constantine’s” idiosyncratic dialogue may be taken as farce by some, and others will refuse to swallow all the new laws “Constantine” establishes. However, the film remains true to its own legislation, for the most part, effectively transmitting reams of information in every scene and glance.

“Constantine” takes the usual liberties with its source, the biggest of which is making its lead a dark-haired American instead of a blond Brit. The film also shaves a decade off of sidekick Chas Chandler’s (Shia LaBeouf) birth certificate and turns Constantine’s bitter enemy Midnight (Djimon Hounsou) into an ambivalent creation who actually helps John at one point.

“Constantine” dares to take its pulpy material seriously for much of the way, but in the end realizes just how silly this comic book stuff really is.

We can’t help but come to the same conclusion.

***

WHAT: “Constantine”

RATING: R (Harsh language, demonic images, alcohol use and supernatural violence)

CREDITS: Directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by Kevin Brodbin based on characters from the Hellblazer graphic novels by DC Comics/Vertigo. Visual effects supervised by Michael Fink

RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes

WEB SITE: www.constantinemovie.com

MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS