Constantine / Sins

Constantine : Keanu Reeves

Two hours and 65 bucks I'm never going to get them back. And to think all I expected from this movie was a decent, slightly mind-numbing action flick with a good Heaven vs. Hell plot. The plot's gone all to hell, right enough. God save anyone who tries to sit through this movie, the patience required is worthy of a Zen master.


John Constantine is a man who, due to some quirk of nature, has become a vigilante sending half-breed demons back to hell. He now faces death by lung cancer and the inevitable fate of a cop being sent to sing-sing into the general population. If he dies, he goes to hell and meets many of his deportees, who of course will be mucho happy to rend him limb by limb for all eternity. If he lives, he wants a chance to get back into Heaven. However god wants much more from this wayward sheep than simple demon deportation. He wants a real change of heart, which our angsty Constantine is not capable of. Such is the basic dilemma of our protagonist. On with the plot.


The movie is slowly leaching out of my mind as I write. I have a wonderful defense mechanism against such experiences, I forget them instanter. Let's see. We have the spear which pierced Christ found somewhere in Mexico, we have a beautiful cop who's also a psychic in denial, we have a family conflict in hell. The Son of Satan wants control of earth, unbeknownst to papa Lucifer; God has other ideas, the Archangel Gabriel is planning to turn into a conscientious objector. I don’t blame the esteemed reader for his current expression. But I warn you, I am actually putting the plot forward in a more coherent manner than the movie does. The movie meanders aimlessly around trying to make itself understood, unveiling bits and pieces that are supposed to shock and awe. Vain, vain attempts. You get the feeling there's something there, something the director's trying to say, and you keep hoping that the key is hiding behind the next frame. I strongly advise against holding your breath. The effects are quite all right, not really earth shattering. The dialogue is stinted. Keanu Reeves is incapable of saving his character. The rest of the cast is not worth much mention.


Don’t watch, please don’t watch Constantine. I hate to do this. I'm mauling a Keanu Reeves action film with a Heaven-Hell theme. I never thought I would have to. There is so much one can do with such a combo. But I have no choice. John Constantine may never repent enough to get into heaven, but after watching this movie, repentance comes naturally enough to me.

-suraj kamath
(http://http://surajkamath.blogspot.com/)

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Sins: director- Vinod Pande

Priest takes fancy to girl. Priest and girl enter clandestine relationship. Priest becomes jealously possessive of girl, doesn’t want to leave the priesthood so he marries her off to some poor fool
while he continues to have his way with her. Girl and husband try to get away as the priest becomes
progressively nuerotic and murderous. - that's Sins in a nutshell for you.

The subject of a priest breaking his vows and fornicating has been explored time and again by filmmakers. Vinod Pande doesn’t exactly take the plunge here; Indian cinema’s favourite subject usually is forbidden relationships, only in this case the protagonist is a priest. Something different you would think...and then you actually see the movie, which follows every possible Hindi movie stereotype. Their might be a sincere effort here to show the hypocrisy of the Church like the affair between the priest and the girl is commonly talked about, the Church congratulates the priest with a promotion, every reason for the Catholic Church to protest against that one. (They have got an image to maintain too, right?) They needn’t worry though, Shiney seems to be the only ‘Father’ to be seen for miles, makes the clergy he belongs to even less believable. Besides, the Malayali community are a conservative lot and wouldn’t have ‘you may now kiss the bride’ as a part of its wedding ceremony when Father Williams marries Graham (Nitesh Pandey) and Rosemary (Seema Rahmani).

Rosemary’s mother stands by and does nothing as her daughter sells herself to the priest, however her
newfound concern for her daughter's welfare in the second half of the movie makes the weepy goodbye scene between them altogether unconvincing. The couple manages to flee the the clutches of the neurotic priest. She is cleansed from her sinful past, clad in a white sari and coyly telling her husband that she is pregnant, which brings to mind how Indian women normally dress after fornicating or being assaulted in the movies.

Also annoying are the attempts to authenticate the Malayali culture, the Malayali accents are confused, Seema Rahmani’s American "r" s slip out in the emotionally charged scenes, the actors themselves don’t seem too comfortable with the English language. Nitesh Pandey blusters unintelligibly through most of his part. Shiney’s raging tantrums are jerky and earsplitting.

The protagonist herself is a weak character and masochistically drawn to the priest's violent nature. She takes a quite a beating which makes you feel sorry for her. She is swung this way and that, first by the priest, then by her family, and does nothing to improve her situation until her husband comes to the rescue and shows her the way out.

The movie itself is marketed typically, the cross hanging in the poster is glaringly obvious but hey,
Sins, Jurm, Rog...all pretty much the same marketing. ‘Forbidden love’ is supposed to make it all the more alluring. So you walk into the theatre and see only half a dozen guys who probably mistook it for porn. They must have been disappointed because Seema Rahmani is leggy and thin, inpite of the blouse ripping scenes, of which there are plenty, there ain’t much to see. The soundtrack is all surprise-thriller oriented, the choir reaching crescendos during the love-making scenes.

This movie does nothing for women, has annoyed the Christian community for the ‘sensitive' portrayal of ‘forbidden love’(honestly what did the director expect?), and most certainly has done nothing for New Age Indian Cinema. If for nothing, go and see how badly it’s made.

- Sarah Bernhardt