No Forgiveness Needed - Priest Is Holy Awesome
May 13, 2011
http://www.ugo.com/movies/priest-review-1
“You would have made a good Priest.”
In any other movie a line like this, especially coming late in the third act, would refer to acts of contrition, selflessness or understanding. In the bluntly titled Priest, a holy man and defender of the faithful (Paul Bettany) offers this compliment to a young sheriff (Cam Gigandet) after shotgunning holes in a train car allowing shafts of light to boil the skin off of attacking vampires.
“You would have made a good Priest.”
Coming as late as it does in the story, and in the midst of a quite dynamic battle, some may let this line slide on by. For me it was another strange nail in the cross in this very enjoyable, and surprisingly daring, despite being a wonderfully weird film.
Priest, based on a Korean manga you have not read, opens with a fine bit of world-building (care of a stellar animation sequence by Genndy Tartakovsky) but never trips over its own mythos. How could it? There’s just no room. Priest is equal parts sci-fi, horror, western and paranoid apocalyptic fantasy. The glue holding it together is a bizarrely badass ecumenical spin.
You see, in the future the vampires (they're not really vampires, they're more like lickers from Resident Evil, but whatever) wage a war against Man. Man, however, is blessed with the power of the sun. The sun or the Son? Perhaps a bit of both, as society is protected by a band of licensed-to-kill clergy who power up with prayer and shoot cross-shaped ninja stars.
It is. . . how should I phrase this delicately. . . FUC*ING AWESOME!!!
Paul Bettany was the best there was, but now that a peace has been brokered between the Monsignor (a mustache-twirling Christopher Plummer) and the baddies live on reservations, society has settled into a comfortable, ugly dystopia. When Bettany's family out in the Badlands falls victim to a new wave of the vampire menace, he must choose Ecclesiology or ass-kicking.
It is outside of Blade Runner-esque Catherdral City, in towns with names like Augustine and Jericho, where the genre-splosion of Priest really kicks in. A demonic hell-train rides through the old west, with Karl Urban gloriously masticating scenery with his protruding fangs. In one glorious moment he is shot from below growling "you're faith failed you!!" as bloody-spit dangles into the post-conversion 3D lens. It's as effective of a vision of tacky, harmless evil you are likely to see at the movies this year.
Priest has everything I want in dopey action-adventure cinema. It has fun motorbikes and crazy weapons and I haven't even gotten to the hot chicks. (Maggie Q may play a Priest, but she still wears leather.) It's also just original enough to prove that, yes, there are ideas lurking behind comic book movies. Forever and ever, amen.
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