Constantine

Review by Zachary Parker

“got faith?”

Director Francis Lawrence has plainly proclaimed his faith in a Dualistic universe, and has made claims on Constantine as being an agent of his belief. However, in this story of the war between demonic and heavenly agents, Lawrence misrepresents his perception of Christianity so completely that he contradicts and finally repudiates his experiment and his own Dualistic beliefs.

Instead, a strong illustration of God’s grace and the Christian faith ultimately exorcise Constantine of its Dualistic possession, though not of its numerous story flaws.

Based on the DC/Vertigo comic book, Hellblazer, John Constantine, played by the monotonous and the actually somewhat humorous Keanu Reeves, lives in Los Angeles (City of Angels), and whose profession consists of deporting demons and angels who violate their passport on earth.

Father Hennessy (Pruitt Taylor Vince), Beeman (Max Baker), and Chaz Kramer (Shia LaBeouf) aid the exorcist in his battle against Satan (Peter Stormare). However, not just the “half-breeds,” but full demons that are forbidden on earth begin to appear, Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) investigates a personally mysterious suicide case, and chain-smoking, self-centered JC comes to save the world.

Djimon Hounsou’s Midnite is a fun-to-watch character with other supporting characters like the androgynous angel, Gabriel, who is played marvelously by the talented Tilda Swinton. 

 

Conflicting with the sovereignty of God, Lawrence’s Dualism is best expressed by John Constantine: “God and the devil made a wager for the souls of men . . . no direct contact, just influence.”

Accordingly, God and the Devil (“Lu”) are equally omnipotent beings locked in an eternal battle for man. Lawrence has taken the biblical account of Satan’s wager with God over Job too far and tried to forget God's complete sovereignty.

In opposition to his own belief, Lawrence mistakenly asserts too many Christian principles that decidedly contradict Dualism. In the end, the vision is of God who in His sovereignty, forgives the unforgivable and saves the damned out of love.

Meanwhile, the devil stomps his feet and succeeds only in temporarily delaying God’s plans (though I still do not agree with this shade of Dualism either).

After hearing Constantine’s description of the universal wager, Angela retorts, “You think the devil is responsible, no, people are evil.”

Too often modern evangelicals attribute their sin to “The devil made me do it,” when God conclusively says that we sin because we are sinners. To attribute your sin to any other and sidestep recognition of your depravity is to reenact man’s first judgment and incur the fatal exile from God’s intimate communion.

However, Angela’s point in the movie extends further, if the world is directed by principles of Dualism, then the problem of evil becomes obscure and meaningless.

Furthermore, the character Midnite is the embodiment of Dualism, having taken a vow of neutrality. However, Midnite, the midway point between day and night, good and evil, cannot help but recognize the futility of a “balance” between good and evil. Thus he eventually decides to aid Constantine in his battle against evil.

 

On the other hand, it is exactly Constantine’s view of God for which Gabriel and Angela rebuke him. In the beginning, we find out that Constantine took a life that was not his to take, and the law forbids unrepentant sinners entrance into heaven. Hence, Constantine smoked cigarettes to kill himself with cancer, and saw his gift to see and fight demons as a curse, instead of as a gift from God.

Gabriel explains that his lack of repentance (to recognize his own sin) and his corresponding lack of acceptance of God’s gifts reveal his lack of “belief” in God. Gabriel points out that Constantine “knows” the truth, but he will not believe it. He suppresses it, and misguidedly tries to do as many good works as he can to buy his passage into “God’s good graces”.

In the beginning, one character exclaims against the law regarding unforgivable crimes, “Rules! Rules! God was the only one she believed loved her!” In Constantine, working for salvation is ultimately futile, and God’s love stands as the only thing to pick sinners up from their self-indulgent pits of conceit. God’s grace and love for His children is revealed to be forgiving and then absolutely unyielding to the devil and sin.

Not only does God’s love set us free, but an affirmation that God has a plan for each and everyone of us, and we must always respond in love to God by obeying the “rules” and the law. Christ's love is the fulfillment of the law. Those who are unrepentant for violating the rules or do not appreciate God’s sovereignty over their lives will be, as Constantine would say, “deported.”