While the character of John Constantine — a British, chain-smoking investigator of the supernatural — was first introduced in the pages of Alan Moore’s groundbreaking run on SWAMP THING, it was his own comic series – HELLBLAZER – that serves as the basis for CONSTANTINE, Hollywood’s big-budget adaptation that plays like a mix of BLADE, THE EXORCIST and THE MATRIX, to mostly satisfying results.

Made American for the movie, Constantine is played by the ever-brooding Keanu Reeves. When he’’s not sucking on smokes or downing liquor, Constantine roams the L.A. streets as a freelance exorcist. Having once been clinically dead for two minutes following a suicide attempt as a teen, he’’s seen Hell and doesn’’t want to end up there, which — given his lung cancer — isn’’t far off. But suicides can’’t get into Heaven, so he hopes to earn his way in by ridding Earth of the demons.

The world is full of “half-breeds,” you see – those who look like humans to you or me, but are either angels or demons in disguise. Constantine’s job gets significantly more difficult when the Spear of Destiny which pierced the side of none other than Jesus Christ – is found in Mexico, somehow threatening to open the gateway that separates Hell from Earth.

Connected to all this is a cop (MUMMY mama Rachel Weisz), who turns to Constantine for help when her twin sister turns up dead; investigators believe it to be a suicide, but Weisz – coming from a devout Catholic background – thinks it was murder.

If anything, CONSTANTINE is *overly* plotted. You can’t often say that about a film based on a comic, but it is, so bogged down in rules and periphery characters that it loses its focus. The final 20 minutes are so muddled and drawn-out that I gave up trying to make sense of it.

But all that lay before it, I really dug. The look of the film is excellent, with L.A. depicted all grimy, Seven-style. Freshman director Francis Lawrence –another graduate from the school of music videos demonstrates an eye for intriguing visuals, even the ones that aren’t made more spectacular by computer effects.

As for Keanu — still not much of a thespian — this is one of his better roles; the less he has to say and smile, the more he excels. And he’’s pretty good here, swatting at a monster made of bugs and snakes, yanking satanic beings out of women and into mirrors, setting fire to a winged army of creatures and not saying or smiling much. Actions speak louder than words, anyway.