Picture the music video for Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” You remember it – the one in which Justin glides through a sleek, modern mansion in muted shades of green and gray, exacting revenge on a blonde in a newsboy cap who looks suspiciously like his real-life ex-girlfriend, Britney Spears. Now picture the video as a two-hour movie, with Keanu Reeves standing in for Justin. And imagine that instead of being a boy-band icon, Reeves is a chain-smoking exorcist who trolls the seedy sections of Los Angeles, babbling in a sarcastic monotone about the battle between good and evil that’s secretly being waged all around us. And there you have “Constantine.”

It looks fantastic – director Francis Lawrence helmed the award-winning Timberlake video and many others before making his film debut here – but takes itself so seriously, it’s often laugh-out-loud funny.

Rated: R for violence and demonic images. Running time: 122 minutes. Rating: 2 out of 4 stars.

– Christy Lemire, AP movie critic


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