I was a dumb teenager at the time but I remember liking Constantine.
I don't know if I should go back now and possibly ruin my otherwise fond memories of it.
I legitimately think it's actually great. And I fucking love Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, Vertigo, etc. There's barely any action in it at all. It's a mystery film. The pacing of all the scenes and cuts work great. Like that Lucifer scene, or rather...THE Lucifer scene...or when he believes Rachel Weisz's story about serious apocalypse shit, they grab a cat, stick his feet in water and he hangs out in Hell for a little bit. Which is the kind of setup and underwhelming magic the comic would always do. Or when they go in Papa Midnite's club. They show "what's off", quick cuts and/or shots of demons, and then the film comes back to play it like it's a regular noir film with nice slow detached pacing.
Really Weisz is the worst part probably because she's a plot device character wearing multiple hats (just happens to be a cop so bonus!) so she doesn't get to have fun, and she's also there for the exposition dumps. At the same time though, they don't do anything like how she doesn't believe and think he's just a nut or whatever, instead, she's actually religious and totally believes even more so which makes her a more relevant ally who turns out to help.
I think way too many people could never get past Keanu. There's so much of this shit that's just like all the Vertigo comics were always doing in taking some other genre and twisting it:
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Most of the fights are like the one with Gavin Rossdale, short, borderline non-comic in their staging outside of the special effects, John pulling off some con or working multiple angles. (Which is totally accurate to the comic!)
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Easily one of my top ten comic films, maybe even top five. Probably. Maybe. It's plausible anyway.
But then again, I think
Batman Returns in many ways remains the one to top.
(And of my once five personal cult great movies set, only
American Psycho has broken out into the internet mainstream and that was recently.
The Mexican and
Ravenous remain generally unknown.
Three Kings doesn't really have any memorable lines. And
Antz has too much stacked against it obviously. That's with two of those getting near
Demolition Man levels of basic cable play.
Constantine can have
American Psycho's slot I guess. Except that it made $250 million. Though all of these films except
Ravenous made bank. I probably actually need to more redefine "personal cult film" to not be stuff I think is great but other people saw and were like "meh" or expecting something different like in the case of
Antz )