John Constantine, on the other hand, has a close if prickly rapport with the major angels and demons of the universe, and two symmetrical forearm tattoos that, when pressed together, create howling wind and various other supernatural phenomena. (This, too, is never fully explained in either the movie or most Sunday school curricula, but we assume it’s one of the finer points of the Catholic catechism.)
A particularly resonant scene of modern skepticism is one in which Constantine and fellow world-saver Angie dare to question the justice of the Catholic Church’s teaching on suicide; namely, that to kill oneself shows such disrespect for God’s gift of life that one could be damned for it. Angie demands that her sister receive a Catholic burial, and the priest’s refusal is portrayed as an inflexible slavishness to an outmoded rule.
My best guess is that Lawrence, Reeves, et al. get away with Constantine precisely because it is so flagrantly wrong. It patches together myth, history, and fiction with such postmodern glee that no single injury or injustice in its plotline piracies can be found. Cinematically, Constantine sets the stage for its myriad “borrowings” and patchworking of sources with an opening sequence of scenes that overtly steal virtually every movie trick in the book.
I swear every Mummy and/or Indiana Jones movie begins this way: an archaeological site in the desert, and the brown-skinned, blue-collar laborer who discovers the one artifact all WASPier scholarly types have been hunting. Then the information that the Spear of Destiny was last seen during World War II —it must have been the Nazi backup plan after the whole Holy Grail debacle in Alexandretta. Constantine’s ride, the Angel City cab, even uses the transportation-name-as-witty-commentary trick of A Streetcar Named Desire, or more recently, The Royal Tenenbaums’ Gypsy Cabs. Then the exorcism—wait, was that Sigourney Weaver from Ghostbusters lying possessed on the bed? No, just some other actress who has captured that grotesque, demonic, yet unsettlingly sexual demeanor that adds a little extra pizzazz to any exorcism scene. It’s all wholesale theft, of course, but then imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery.
With this attitude, one can hardly find fault in Lawrence’s similar treatment of religious motifs and storylines. Few people will enter or leave the Catholic Church after having seen the movie, but neither effect was probably on the movie’s agenda anyway. Maybe, just this once, a very average movie will be taken for just that, and neither an outraged religious radicalism nor a dazzling success at the box office will proclaim the latest sign of the Apocalypse.
—Laura E. Kolbe