Movie Review: Priest
In 2008, I saw Punisher: War Zone in the theaters. At first, I couldn’t quite tell what the tone of the movie was intended to be, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be taking this ridiculous story seriously or if it was consciously trying to be ridiculous all along. Then, halfway through the film, a Parkour runner, doing a somersault to another rooftop, is blown to smithereens in midair by a rocket launcher, in slow motion. That was the point where I realized the movie was completely absurd, and I was able to continue watching it with a guilty smile on my face.
How does this relate to Priest? Well, halfway through the film, we see Paul Bettany attacking a vampiric monster by leaping into the air, at which point a fellow Priest throws rocks in front of him. Bettany uses these stones as they glide through the air as stairs to give himself enough height to tackle the monster as it pounces on him. If you haven’t face palmed or fallen out of your seat laughing, you can probably make it through Priest. Like War Zone, I cannot recommend it as a good film per se, but if you’re willing to roll with it, it is entertaining in its own, silly way.
The Priests of the title are an order of people with special gifts of…well, it’s never really explained, but based on their actions throughout the movie, think Jedi armed only with the power of faith and faith-based killing weapons (like Bibles containing throwing stars). Their job? Kill vampires. But these vampires aren’t Bela Lugosi-type blood suckers – they’re more like the Pinky monster from Doom, only faster and vulnerable to sunlight. The Priests have been more effective at taking these things out than any army on Earth…so effectively, in fact, that vampires are believed to be extinct in the wild, existing in only a handful of reservations (and not the pleasant sort of nature preserve reservations, either). Fearing the Priests might take over, the High Council of the Church (played by Lord High Character Actor Christopher Plummer and others) decide to disband the Priests and forbid them to leave the dank, Blade Runner-esque cities (all the smog you could want! Who wouldn’t want to stay?).
This actually doesn’t seem to be such a bad deal until Priest (Bettany) receives word from Sheriff Hicks (Cam Gigandet) that his brother Owen Pace (Stephen Moyer) and his family have had their farm ransacked by the supposedly extinct vampires (and yes, I do believe there was intentional irony in casting Bill Compton from True Blood as a vampire victim), and that his niece Lucy (Lily Collins) has been kidnapped. He wants to investigate, but in order to do so he must seek permission from the council. Figuring this will cause a stir if it is thought vampires exist once more, they forbid him to leave. Bad idea. Leaving a trail of dead guards in his wake (and fellow Priests out to bring him back dead or alive), Priest ventures out into the apocalyptic landscape (looking eerily similar to the present day American Southwest) to find Lucy and bring her back safe.
If you were looking for some sort of satirical comment on organized religion, that’s the most you’ll get. The rest of the movie is “find the baddie, save the girl and the world” material, replete with love interests, dark caves, and blood spurting a-plenty. None of it is truly outstanding in any original way, but the whole point of the film is to eventually get Priest to do battle with Black Hat (Karl Urban), who is definitely a vampire, but of a much more human variety. The scenes with him are fairly limited, but Urban makes the most of what he has. Whether it’s strolling down the street conducting a symphony of slaughter, or giving one of the most insanely funny grimaces I’ve seen in a long time, he seems to be having the most fun of everyone in the movie. Granted, he could definitely use a few lessons from Geoffrey Rush or Anthony Hopkins in how to steal the show and never give it back, but if The Rock is to be this generation’s Schwarzenegger, Urban seems like he’s shooting to be this generation’s Robert Urich…you know, the sort of go-to-guy who’ll do just about any role and have a good time doing it. Oh, and Maggie Q is in there, too, both to beat the crap out of a vampire or two, and to provide Priest with the old “Oh, if only we weren’t celibate” quandary.
As you might expect from a comic book adaptation (a South Korean one at that), the movie leans toward the loud and explosive, as well as a definite suspension of disbelief as you see the Priests consistently defy gravity and the laws of physics to pull off their stunts. It’s hokum, and murky hokum at that, but at least the explanation is plausible enough to explain why people are flipping around doing the near-impossible. There are plenty of movies that can’t even get that right (Mission: Impossible II, anyone?). And the 3D is okay; while nowhere near the clarity and stunning depth that Kung Fu Panda 2 offers, it is a sight better than the 3D in Thor, and even a few shots in the nearly pitch black caves offered some cool scenes (movie going tip: see your 3D in a theater with good polarized lighting; I can imagine how much of a mess this would look if the screen wasn’t as bright).
In all, is Priest a good film? Not really, no. It’s silly and brainless, and despite Karl Urban’s best, the villain’s motivations are sort of…nonsensical. But, on the other hand, it is a step up for Bettany from the “so bad, it’s terrible” Legion and more seriously handled than the “so bad, it ratchets all the way back to awesome” Punisher: War Zone. Basically, if you’re the kind of person who likes close-ups of bullets being sliced in half, rock climbing in the most literal sense of the word, or just likes to put in Delta Force on occasion, then Priest may be worth your time.
Seth Paul
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