Constantine

Herald rating: * * *

There is a bit more begetting in this one, too. It began life as the Hellblazer comic book, was made into this movie and now it's a video game franchise. The hero, John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), is a chain-smoking, depressed demon-hunter who lives above a bowling alley in LA.

He has lots of reasons to be depressed, apart from living above a bowling alley in LA. Since he was a child, he has been able to see the non-humans - half-angels and half-devils - walking among us. He knows he is doomed to hell because he tried to kill himself and is trying to take out enough demons to earn his way into heaven. He has already spent some time in hell. Oh, and the angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) has confirmed his doctor's diagnosis of lung cancer.

In his quest to find and eliminate the half-angels and half-devils, Constantine has the help of a Q-like character, Beeman (Max Baker), and Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), an LA cop who comes to seek his advice after her twin sister, Isabel, apparently committed suicide after seeing demons.

Constantine and Angela confront their demons in LA's night-time at the halflings' favourite haunt, a nightclub run by Midnite (Djimon Hounsou), a former witch doctor, and Constantine will eventually confront Satan (Peter Stormare) over the Spear of Destiny, the weapon that killed Christ.

The theology is only slightly more dodgy than The Da Vinci Code, but this is meant to be a comic and succeeds at that level.

Among the impressive array of features on the two-disk special edition is Conjuring Constantine, which looks at the development of the character from the original. Director Francis Lawrence takes control of a couple of features - Confessional, about his move from music videos to this first attempt at movie directing, and the behind-the-scenes cuts, Collision With Evil. Holy Relics features the props, including the Spear Of Destiny; Hellscape shows how the view of hell was based on the LA freeways; and 14 deleted scenes include an alternative ending and more background on Constantine.

Lawrence provides commentary on many of the snippets and is joined by producer Akiva Goldsman and writers Frank Cappello and Kevin Brodbin on the main feature track.

* Constantine is available on DVD, video rental from July 27