"You're fucked," archangel Gabriel tells John Constantine. As God's messenger, Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) is in a position to know. But Constantine (Keanu Reeves) isn't quite ready to give up. Sure, he's doomed to go to Hell for committing murder--but in a futile effort to get back on God's good side, he spends his life as a sort of chain smoking Ghostbuster, performing bed-shaking exorcisms and fighting computer-generated demons in equal measure.

It's a moody and smart premise, and it's won great praise in DC Comics' Hellblazer. As an adaptation of Hellblazer, Constantine plays fast and loose with the original story--but as a film in and of itself, Constantine works. It's far from perfect--the pacing drags, and the often silly plot (which has something to do with a requisite powerful relic and a love interest, played by Rachel Weisz, who has a sister stuck in Hell) is unabashedly secondary to the premise. But Constantine's still a viscerally enjoyable, even philosophically intriguing treatment of religion: Christianity as an action film.

Reeves keeps the inevitable Keanu-ness to a minimum, pulling off Constantine's justifiable cynicism and surprisingly funny sarcasm. While Reeves' Neo from The Matrix was a wide-eyed savior, his Constantine is a nihilistic asshole stuck in a fight he didn't start. Likewise, the unexpectedly cast Swinton is pitch-perfect as the androgynous Gabriel. But for every great casting choice--like Djimon Hounsou as Constantine's shady associate, Papa Midnite, or Peter Stormare as Satan--there are bewildering ones (like Bush's preening frontman, Gavin Rossdale, as a demon nemesis, or kiddie star Shia LaBeouf as Constantine's useless sidekick).

But overall, the focus is on Constantine and a grimy, rusty, and obsolete (yet inevitable) religion. The Christianity of Constantine isn't mere feel-good mythology--it's a dirty, corrupt, petty system that remains unavoidably powerful (in short, it's a lot like religion in current America). There's no way for Constantine to avoid the world he lives in, nor alter the religious rules he's subject to. But for the running time of Constantine, he does his damndest--punching hellish golems, shooting demons, and trading quips with Satan. As antiheroes--and comic book adaptations--go, you could do a lot worse.