This is a review of a “Fan Edit.” Details of the original film, including twists and the ending, may be revealed.
Constantine is a questionable choice for a fan edit. The best sources are films that are basically very good, but have one or two distinct flaws that can be removed. That’s not the case here. Poor acting isn’t something that can be fixed with a few chops, nor is lackluster dialog. And there are no huge errors. I didn’t watch the original and think to myself, “Ah, that scene just doesn’t belong” as I did when watching Silent Hill.
However, it isn’t surprising that Constantine got the re-cut treatment. It’s based on a cult comic, Hellblazer, which means it has a readership that has its own ideas about how the movie should have gone.
Hellblazer 
Editor: Jorge. Runtime: 126 min (+5 min). 2007.
I sat down with a feeling of trepidation to watch Jorge’s re-edit of Constantine. It’s a bad sign when an editor mentions making a movie more like its source material. I needn’t have worried. While there are noticeable changes, it’s not a re-working of the film, but a mild alteration of it. It is not an attempt to make a middling movie great (which would be doomed before it began), but only to make it a little better. That it does.
What the now-titled Hellblazer does is keep the story on demon hunter John Constantine, with a few brief side trips with psychic Angela Dodson. There’s a rule in storytelling that almost no one remembers in filmmaking: Find a point of view, an entrance into the story, and stick with it. If you follow one character, than the viewer gets the excitement of learning as he learns and is frightened by things that scare him. If you float around from event to event, not only do you lose the mystery, but also the emotional intimacy.
Of course there are many, many reasons to abandon this mode of storytelling, but you need some kind of reason. In Constantine the reason is to show a few cool action scenes. It’s not enough. The viewer is pulled away from John Constantine to watch a man carry the Spear of Destiny across the continent. If there were some vital or even dramatic events connected to this trip, it might have made up for continually losing contact with the protagonist. But the spear, like all the other magical toys that pop up throughout the film, is only significant for its single plot-device function. It could have been a +1 flaming sword or cloak of holding for all the difference it makes to the story (yup, Constantine has the same flow as your average role playing game).
In Hellblazer, the travelogue is missing. We learn about the spear when Constantine does, making what was nothing but a psychic flashback into something relevant. The movie doesn’t start with people we will never know discovering something in the desert, but with Constantine learning lung cancer is going to kill him; the scene was moved from later in the film. The changes don’t turn it into a personal story (nothing could), but they are steps in the right direction.
Not only do the cuts focus Hellblazer on John Constantine, but the additions do as well. Jorge added back deleted scenes that flesh out his life. A few extra seconds expand his torturous childhood. But the most important additions are two scenes (plus an extension of a third) that introduce us to Constantine’s demon lover. Constantine‘s director, Francis Lawrence, had cut her out of the story because he wanted John Constantine to be alone before meeting Angela. But what could be more alone than desperately seeking out a girl (very definitely the wrong girl) for some kind of contact and having her laugh at your pain. Her return to the movie also repairs some rough editing in the original as her removal wasn’t seamless.
Jorge displays a keener understanding of editing than original editor Wayne Wahrman in his less significant changes. He gives us Angela’s view of Hell when she first sees it (when it is dramatically pertinent) instead of at the end when we should be with Constantine. He also removes a bug demon attack where the CGI wasn’t up to snuff. The addition of a few seconds of cab travel at the beginning works to ease the viewer into Constantine’s world. These are small matters, but they add up.
Hellblazer is not only well thought out, it is skillfully executed. The changes are undetectable. Each deletion is invisible. Simply put, this is beautiful work. One addition could have used color correction (the deleted scene source is lower quality than the rest of the film) but that’s a minor item.
Jorge’s version is not a magnificent film, but it beats the original. There’s little more that could be done to improve upon it (perhaps a bit less of the priest when he is on his own). Since this isn’t a case where multiple versions are necessary, I plan to retire my DVD of Constantine and put Hellblazer in its place.