Three Films Make A Post: The wager between heaven and hell is on Earth

Constantine (2005): I absolutely loathed this when I first saw it, but now, I have more complicated feelings about this piece of horror-leaning urban fantasy: as an adaptation of the original Vertigo Hellblazer comics, this is an absolute catastrophe, the sort of adaptation that changes tone, style, location, world building, philosophy, ethics of the thing it adapts to the worse… Hell, even the original colour of the protagonist’s coat isn’t good enough for it, and Los Angeles sure as shit is not London.

If you treat this as completely its own thing, a movie about some other, much less interesting, Constantine having special effects heavy supernatural adventures in that most boring city, Francis Lawrence’s film is actually a lot of fun. Depending on my mood, I can take or leave this approach when watching-

Apex (2026): This grieving Charlize Theron versus psycho Taron Egerton in the wilderness movie by Baltasar Kormákur does very little for me. Despite a game Theron, this is painfully generic, has a dull middle, and overuses CG for everything computer animation is not good at – trees, waves, you name it.

Egerton’s movie psycho performance is also terribly annoying, full-on in the always playing for the camera even when the character is supposed to be alone kind of way too many serial killer performances devolve into. It robs the character of all of its potential threat in favour of clowning.

Hellfire (2026): Stephen Lang continues to throw his hat into the elderly action hero ring, and is a fine, calm presence there. In fact, some people might call the first half or so of low budget action maestro Isaac Florentine’s Hellfire a little too calm. Me, I enjoyed listening to the score playing variations on “Wayfaring Stranger” while various character actors (and an ill-looking Harvey Keitel) create actual relationships and a sense of place, and menace slowly builds up.

And once that menace explodes, Florentine gets to stage some rather nice action pieces. Particularly some limited vehicular action and an intense close quarters fight between Lang and Johnny Yong Bosch delight.