R.I.P.D.

Rest In Peace Department

My first thought about this movie was interest, I'm interested with death and the afterlife, ever since Beetlejuice and the Halloween Tree. Though as any person that's seen Men In Black (M.I.B.) will tell you R.I.P.D. shares many similarities of the 90's film. The obvious points would be the car, the hidden police motif, and the new guy with the seasoned older partner. This doesn't bother me since all of these things are expected from action films of this type of genre. It's a Buddy Cop movie with a SciFi filling, though (in both media) they glazed over the fact that this whole story is based in Christian lore. As a framing device for the story it's great since it's not heavy on preaching, which is incredibly appreciated, though it's interesting that we know there's a God in this film, but never see an Angel. Since a lot of the subject matter revolves around virtuous characters like those aspiring to be an Angel and malevolent characters that are Demons from Hell, though that's only in the comic, in the film they're corrupted souls that have escaped or made a deal to stay away from Hell at all costs. It brings up the question, is Constantine a better film than this? Since he's a questionable cop-like character in Christian lore who also fights/bargains with the Devil directly. Roll that over a little, though let's dig a bit deeper into this film and comic series.