(2005) Caught in the mortal matrix between heaven and hell, John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), a supernatural detective who deports demons back to hell, receives a request from Father Hennessy (Pruitt Taylor Vince) to exorcise from a young woman possession by a soldier hellion, capturing the fiend in a large mirror and smashing it in the street.

Himself destined for hell for having attempted suicide 20 years earlier (dead for two minutes after having been cursed as a child with seeing chthonic half-breeds, Satan's influence peddlers), Constantine (note his initials JC) is desperate to earn his way back into God's good graces; but winged Gabriel (Tilda Swinton), pointing out his ungenerous self-regard and compulsive smoking (coughing up blood, not much time left), reminds him that only self-sacrifice and belief can save his soul.

An LAPD detective, Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), making confession to her priest of another killing, is worried she's damned for having a preternatural sense of when to duck and where to shoot; she refuses to accept that her twin sister jumped to her death (a mortal sin for a devout Catholic) from the roof of the Ravenscar Mental Hospital where she'd been a patient: "Isabel wouldn't kill herself."

After being personally attacked on the street by Vermin Man, Constantine becomes doubtful of reassurances from his assistant Beeman (Max Baker) that they "can't come through to our plane." When Constantine goes to an exclusive bar, from which his apprentice/driver Chas Kramer (Shia LaBeouf) is barred from entering, he finds the fallen angel (like Gabriel, a half-breed) Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale) in the company of the mystical Papa Midnite (Djimon Hounsou), who maintains his neutrality by saying: "Demons stay in hell, angels in heaven. The great détente of the original superpowers."

Hearing of Constantine's unique talents as a demon hunter, Angela ("People are evil…. I don't believe in the devil") pays him a visit ("He believes in you") with a request to help her find her sister's murderer. "Let's see if she's in hell," he says and takes a trip below: "God, I hate this part."

Some of the principal characters and events are taken from the DC Comics/Vertigo Hellblazer graphic novels by Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis, while others and the rest of the plot ("There's always a catch") are the product of screenwriters Kevin Brodbin, Frank Cappello, and Mark Bomback in director Francis Lawrence's R-rated "gorror" fantasy.

According to the 17th act of Corinthians ("Corinthians goes to twenty one acts in the Bible in Hell"), Mammon, the son of Satan (Peter Stormare), needs God's help to cross over into the mortal plane; that divine assistance arrives in the form of the Spear of Destiny (lost since WWII), recently discovered wrapped in a Nazi flag in Mexico. The host of hell also requires a powerful psychic in the person of Angela ("I've always known that I could see").

In the final confrontation, Constantine employs an electrocution chair from Sing Sing Prison and a dragon's breath gun, while Chas supplies shotgun shells filled with holy water. "You're the only soul I would come up here to collect myself," says Lucifer to Constantine. After the end credits a final scene appears.

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