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Keanu Reeves battles to stay out of hell in Constantine, a comic book adaptation that's infernal for all the wrong reasons. Armed with a crucifix shotgun, some holy water and a range of "Whoa dude!" expressions Reeves is John Constantine, a hardboiled, chain-smoking exorcist who patrols the streets of LA killing demons in the hope of gaining a free pass into heaven. But things get complicated when he meets copper Angela (Rachel Weisz), whose twin sister's suicide holds a dark secret...

Beginning with a thrilling sequence in which Constantine performs an impromptu exorcism on a little girl, this adaptation of DC/Vertigo comic book Hellblazer promises to be flame resistant. Reeves plays the cancer-ridden demon hunter as the anti-Neo, puffing on smokes with the demeanour of a man convinced that lighting up constitutes method acting as he riffs on his dumb 'n' dumber surfer persona with gusto: who else but Keanu would ascend to heaven while flipping Satan the finger?

"SHOVES AS MANY IDEAS ON SCREEN AS POSSIBLE"

Yet the movie quickly falters thanks largely to a script that's the screenwriting equivalent of spray-and-pray. Shoving as many novel ideas on screen as possible - See Keanu with lung cancer! See the damned in hell! See Rachel Weisz in a wet T-shirt! - Constantine's incoherent plotting ruins the comicbook's frazzled, hard-bitten edge. That's been enough to annoy hardcore Hellblazer fans and, by the time Satan (Peter Stormare) pops up as a Frenchman in a dodgy white suit, you might well be desperate to damn it too.