Ray Pride

Suicide is painless.

Or so the glib lyric went to the theme song to Robert Altman's version of "M*A*S*H," penned by his then 13-year-old son. "Constantine," the adaptation of the DC-Vertigo comics series "Hellblazer," has a slightly more sophisticated take, with Keanu Reeves under-underplaying as a freelance exorcist trying to find his way back into the good graces of Heaven after a youthful suicide attempt that left him with the stench of Hell in his nostrils. In "Imaginary Heroes," written and directed by 25-year-old Dan Harris, one of the writers of the teen-knowing "X2: X-Men United" (as well as, with screenwriting partner Michael Dougherty, the Bryan Singer-produced "Logan's Run" and Singer-directed "Superman Returns" and a year of upcoming issues of "Ultimate X-Men" comic books) worries the dissolution of a suburban family after the suicide of a swim-champion son. Pain eddies outward. The center, as Yeats would say, cannot hold.

While both films confront the subject of death with lurid fascination, a popcorn movie like the CGI-heavy "Constantine" usually grabs its tens of millions of dollars from a couple of leveraged sources, the resources for a small, script-and-actor-driven movie like "Imaginary Heroes" is more convoluted, starting with its nine producers and the presentation credit of its German and Belgian financiers: "Signature Pictures International Presents An ApolloProMedia QI Quality International Co-Production In Association with Signature Pictures."

The script, which Harris wrote when he was 22, impressed others beyond Bryan Singer, who saw an early draft and signed him to work on "X2." The cast is strong, but Harris lined up other estimable collaborators, such as executive producer Art Linson ("The Untouchables," "Heat") composer John Ottman ("The Usual Suspects"), editor James Lyons ("Far from Heaven," "Safe") and cinematographer Tim Orr, none of whose luminous works, which include "George Washington," "Undertow" and "Raising Victor Vargas," ever looks the same.

As Harris is said to have put it in the press kit for this clever feel-bad-now-feel-good accumulation of sorrow and spite, in what could be dubbed his "Ordinary Ice Storm American Beautiful People, The Squid and the Whale": "The Greek tragedies of Aeschylus begin with a single action, a single mistake--the 'original sin.' It is the seed from which the story grows, like the branches of a tree, or the butterfly effect of the chaos theory. Someone makes a mistake in the past. What happens when that mistake changes history so much that it informs everything that happens over the next twenty years? What happens when the mistake itself is a secret? Where do people think their problems come from?" In the case of the year-in-the-life of "Imaginary Heroes," one small thing will inexorably lead to an unraveling and then to small disasters, such as Weaver's experimentation with marijuana leading to a midlife bust.

Michelle Williams, Kip Pardue, Jeff Daniels, Emile Hirsch and Ryan Donowho have their movements--Hirsch and Donowho's drug-addled experiments in life are plausible and uneasy--but the movie belongs to Weaver. "Imaginary Heroes" is an uneasy mix of black comedy and intense alienation that comes to life in the faces of the younger actors, particularly in moments fraught with homoerotic tension, and the timelessly strong and sculptured features of Weaver despite unconvincing motivations for some of her actions, and an ending that manages to bring the disparate strands together. John Hughes' suburbia was another century altogether.

"Constantine" is another time-slipping mix of elements, most perplexing for fans of "The Matrix"-era Keanu Reeves in that he plays a man battling the forces of an alternate universe kitted out in the same sort of black-suited, white-shirted, black-tied garb as his nemesis, Mr. Smith (Hugo Weaving) back in Wachowski World. Constantine is a man who's smoked since he was 13, riddled with the cares of the demonic world, eaten alive by cancer while still mediating battles between high and low in a small, Los Angeles-set portion of Hell and Earth. Does it have anything profound to say about loss, any significant, powerful statements to make about Good, Evil and how choices lead to results? Unless a viewer can decipher the relentless borrowings from Catholicism and the seldom-revealed "rules" of the comic-book series, "Constantine" works best as a study of faces: Reeves glaring through stolid, polyethnic features while holding an athletic stance; Rachel Weisz squinting and lightly pouting her wondrous mouth; Tilda Swinton's otherworldly hauteur as the gender-ambiguous archangel Gabriel; and a post-Coen Brothers Peter Stormare as just another guy in a white suit named Lou who longs for Constantine's soul. Genre stories ought to work as metaphor as well as simple narrative; the suburban disaffection of "Imaginary Heroes" is familiar, as is the dystopian, deteriorating post- "Blade Runner" L.A. sci-noir landscape of "Constantine." Both dabble in damage, and believe at least in pain, if not Good or Evil or Heaven or Hell.

"Imaginary Heroes" opens Friday. "Constantine" still walks the earth.

(2005-02-22)

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