Kill James Bond! - S4E19.5: Constantine

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

It's Girls Night! Rounding out our little impromptu run of two-host episodes comes the 2005 Keanu Reeves comic book adaptation Constantine. Can John Constantine, a man doomed to hell because of a suicide attempt, prevent the coming of the Antichrist? can Keanu deliver a line with any emotion in it? And what is Shia LeBeouf doing here? ----- We've been nominated for Podcast of the Year at the ITV bCreator Awards! It’s public vote, so vote for us here under “creator shortlist”. should take about a minute, you don’t have to live in Britain to vote! www.bcreator.co.uk/awards/ ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. In our home, we talk a lot about how insane everything feels, and agonise constantly over what can be done to best help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza facing the full brunt of genocidal violence. My partner Rebecca has put together a list of four fundraisers you can contribute to- all of them are at work on the ground doing what they can. -Palestinian Communist Youth Union, which is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 -Thamra, which distributes herb and veg seedlings, repairs and maintains water infrastructure, and distributes food made with replanted veg patches https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-thamra-cultivating-resilience-in-gaza ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the every app account

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond, and it's Girls' Night again. Girls' Night! I'm November Kelly. I am joined as always by my friend and co-host Abigail Thorne. Hello. Hello. I'm painting my nails. I'm twirling my hair and kicking my feet on the bed. Yeah. And we're talking about boys. It's great. But I'm not joined by my friend and co-host Devon because they are at Trans Pride with the largest camera I have ever seen in my life and 12 enormous sheets of film. Oh, I thought Dev was sick. I thought they were sick this week. They had a fever. I mean, maybe the fever is large format photography.

Yeah. Yeah. Have you got a fever? The only cure is film. Silver salts. But yeah, no, so it's Girls' Night instead. And what it is is the 2005 film Constantine. Yes, this was Dev's bonus pick. And what a pick, to be honest. Continuing religion season.

An adaptation of a comic book movie starring Keanu Reeves' John Constantine, hunting down demons. And I think this one's interesting because it's post-matrix, but it's pre-Marvels. So, like, Keanu Reeves is just like, come out of the Matrix. He's like, right, I'm clearly an extremely well-established leading man. We haven't invented John Wick yet. But clearly I can carry a fucking movie franchise.

But, like, the Marvel apparatus and the DC apparatus wasn't there to take this character any further. So to be honest, if I was James Gunn, I would be backing a truck full of money up to Keanu Reeves' house and saying, please, can you reprise the role of John Constantine in the DC universe? although he doesn't keep any of the money he's paid for his films, I hear. Interesting. But the problem is this kind of is a John Wick film, if your criterion for what a John Wick film is, as mine is, is a well-known character actor who you like, and you go, oh, hey, it's that guy, goes, you really think you could defeat me, John, and then Keanu Reeves goes, yeah, that's a John Wick movie, by that metric, so is this. Pretty much, yeah. Because John Constantine, if you're not familiar, is like a British, a distinct.

English comic character. Yeah, in the book, in the, in the comics, he's from fucking Liverpool. Yeah. And the, the sort of like elevator pitch there is, what if you're kind of like mystical warlock Dr. Strange figure was not this kind of august, uh, like serious, elderly, sort of introspective type, but instead, uh, like working class grubby British dickhead. What if, what if he was one of the lads? Yeah.

And also, what if he looked a lot? like Sting, because back in the day, you could just be like, I want to make a comics character who looks like Sting because I like Sting. And one problem with Keanu Reeves, you have to say, is that he doesn't look a lot like Sting. Also, his Liverpool accent is non-existent because he's not an even attempting one, because the whole movie's set in L.A. where there are many, many demons, but yeah, shame that they lost out. I would have loved to see Keanu Reeves do a Liverpool accent. That would have been really good. But anyway. Yeah. But so we begin with the cheapest font on the menu,

Ariel, that's Ariel, baby. Yeah. We get some titles that I genuinely had to stop and go, did they put those in on purpose, or is this like a kind of work in progress thing, informing us that the spear of destiny, we remember this from like Indiana Jones or whatever. I'm pretty certain.

It's the Jesus getting crucified. Roman centurion stabs him to, you know, fulfill the kind of poker dead body bucket. kit list item and that spear is like magically imbued with like divine power spear of longinus I think yeah yeah because that's the that's the guy's name and whoever holds it you know uh will kind of like accrue great spiritual power and magical power cool all right that's on my guffin um we actually begin though uh in Mexico with it with this is technically a 009 scene I hope you realize this is true This is true. 0.0.9.

This, so, I mean, I have to say, despite not fully having the yellow filter, this is some nasty work to do to Mexico, because we are in, we're in like the badlands, right? Where there's, I don't know what it's like a ruined church or something, ruined cemetery. I don't know how you deconsecrate a cemetery, but like... Move the bodies, I guess, but... A couple of prominently placed, like, broken crucifixes. And there are these two guys who are, I would say, scrabblers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're scrabbling, they're scrabbling, they're scrabbling around.

They're scrabbling. They're, like, scrabbling around the place. And one of them accidentally uncovers a box, which is wrapped in a Nazi flag, full on, like, swastika. And inside is the sphere of longerness. Thinking about the Nazis who, like, fled to not the US to work for NASA, not like Argentina, but specifically Mexico, just as kind of an offbeat thing to be like... Just flight got

diversed, I guess. Yeah, I thought I could really get in touch with myself in Coosumel. Hmm. So it's great scuba diving say I hear. It does not yet been invented, but when it is, we will have a very nice time. Yeah, so

while, you know, in between ordering the like, um, you know, like fish tacos or whatever, these guys buried their spear of destiny in their Nazi flag just to make sure you knew who it belonged to and one of these guys finds it and instantly

gollums that shit. He hits the gollum pose like second one after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's immediately seized with a powerful notion. He just gets up and starts power walking. He starts Chad walking away. The thing appears on the inside of his wrist specifically the zodiac

symbol from the movie Zodiac and the actual serial killer, the Zodiac. And then he like, gets up and his friend is like, hey, what's going on? And he is 009ed instantly by a speeding car. He's taken out by a car. But, but he just fucking gets up and keeps going, baby. This guy, this guy has been killed in the opening scene.

And therefore, he's technically a 009, but he's still going. That's true. That's true. Shout out to Mexican, uh, Mexican spiritual, 009. They, they make them fucking different in Mexico. Like, 009 just starts walking towards the horizon ominously. Okay, cool. We'll catch up with him later in the movie, I guess.

There's a bit of like bits of Breaking Bad that do similar things. But also of Preacher, which this reminded me of in terms of comic book adaptations. I don't think I've seen. Oh, is that the Paul Bettany vampire movie? No, that's Priest. Oh, that was a dog shit movie. Preacher is a Garth Ennis comic that was adapted by Amazon into a miniseries. Oh, okay.

And the deal there is that it's like very, very, like, lurid. Right. More so than this, but it has sometimes a similar sensibility. Also, I really like the effect of him being hit by the car, and the car is just completely, like, stoved in twain. Yeah. And he's just fine. It's like Superman. He's just junked.

Yeah. Yeah. So we cut to L.A. Los Angeles. Los Angeles, my beloved trash fire, where a lady has a problem in that her daughter is upside down climbing the wall. and hissing, which is not typical teen behavior in the United States. No. No, I understand not.

Yes. Yeah. And so she is looking for like spiritual assistance. Yeah, she's like, I'm in, I need an exorcist from the movie The Exorcist. Because what's the kid's name in The Exorcist? Oh, God. Little Miss Exorcist. She's climbing the walls.

She's her head spinning around. She's vomiting. She's speaking backwards in Latin and shit. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, but so she does get a priestessist. in. She gets the priest from the exorcist in to do this out. And in a sort of distinction from that that this priest is like obviously terrified and out of his depth. And when John Constantine

arrives on the scene. Yes. And I go, no, that is not John Constantine. He doesn't look anything like Sting. This priest has to be like, yeah, I knew I was out of my depth. So I called you Keanu Reeves. Yes. He's like, I'm a demolition man. And I'm, I'm, He's driven in a yellow cab by a guy who I forgot was in this movie. Yep. But here he is, very young Shia Leboeuf. Hello to you playing Chaz.

Playing Chaz with a, with a, like, so they have a kind of like, he calls him his slave at one point. Yeah. Or rather, Chaz calls himself John's slave. And John's like, no, no, no, you're my valued apprentice. But they do have a kind of like a full-time dynamic thing going on.

It's kind of a Batman and Robin situation. Emotionally, too. Yeah, yeah, sort of troublingly, so. I kind of like their little, like, repartee, though. They're kind of like old married couple. Yeah, I will say as well that Shalabov does give a good performance in this. That you can see him auditioning for Transformers, and it's like, okay, yeah. All right.

I think it was fucked up that they made, uh, that John Constantine made his apprentice wear, uh, like a flat cap as a kind of condition of his apprenticeship, because it looks fucking awful and he's stuck in it the whole movie. I don't know why, but I genuinely thought you were going to say Chastity Cage there. That is kind of a dynamic I mean he might do that too I don't know I don't know what Shilabah has going on

ever really nothing good lately it feels like but so Devon Jump Scare yeah that's right I'm not even on the episode and I'm still holding the second half of it hostage if you want to hear the rest of this you're going to need to go to patreon.com

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