Priest is a film that borrows a laundry list of concepts from a vast number of better films, puts them in a blender and then throws that blended shit straight at the wall in hopes that some of it sticks. Some films can actually pull this technique off quite well and at least manage some sort of entertainment value (the recently released Fast Five being a perfect example), but where Priest fails spectacularly is that it is simply a poorly executed and oddly lifeless film that wants to simultaneously ape a dystopian future sci-fi flick, a vampire epic, and what might be the eight billionth (roughly) adaptation of The Searchers. Special effects master Scott Stewart’s follow up to the modestly liked and somewhat similarly religiously tinged Legion has quite simply bitten off far more than he can chew and he seems more than content to just sleepwalk through one of the most boring and unexciting horror-action hybrids in years. If Legion was Stewart’s Equilibrium, this is certainly his Ultraviolet.
Paul Bettany returns to collaborate with Stewart a second time (for God knows what reason) as an unnamed priest living in the middle of a Blade Runner rip off where vampires have taken over Blade 2 style. Before they can take over and turn the world into Daybreakers they are sent into hiding and into forced internment by Bettany and his band of not-so-merry priests who kick arse for the lord. After the church ascends to Big Brother status under the guidance of a band of monsignors lead by Christopher Plummer, the priests find themselves out of work with nothing more to show for it than undying faith and crosses permanently tattooed on their faces. Bettany is called out of retirement, however, when a band of vampires attack his brother’s family and take his “niece” hostage in the middle of a sub-Deadwood style Wild West setting that lies just beyond the outskirts of the city. The mastermind behind this nefarious plot is a former priest who has become “the first human vampire.” This villain is played by Karl Urban who looks like a sad cross between The Undertaker and Eddie Murphy from Vampire in Brooklyn and is written like a total f**ing idiot. The Priest is aided in his quest by landspeeders… sorry, I mean really fast motorcycles, a local sheriff (Cam Gigandent) and a female priest (Maggie Q) who was originally assigned by the church to bring him back to the city to stop causing a ruckus. These are two people audiences will not remotely give a shit about, and to the movie’s credit, it is so incoherently edited that one tends to forget they were even in the movie in the first place (especially in the final action sequence that even creators of films for The Asylum would be ashamed to watch).
Before I launch into a bigger tirade on how terribly made Priest is, it must be said that two of the film’s most glaring faults have to lie at the foot of the studio and not the filmmaker. Priest had seen several release dates come and go thanks to some very pointless 3-D conversion and editing seemingly designed to get a more marketable PG-13 rating at the box office. Scenes in the film very clearly end at points where characters are visibly about to start doing something else and in some cases where they are about to start saying another line of dialog. There is blood, but it is all showcased well after the fact and even the sound effects of people getting stabbed and sliced are really muted. When someone gets stabbed in a film that is patently ridiculous on the surface and over the top, it should be crunchy and gushing. Here it sounds like someone getting a papercut. As for the 3-D, I can not bite my tounge any further. I have to appeal to Sony on a personal level after this film and Green Hornet that they really have become the worst profiteers when it comes to getting their hands on all the money they possibly can. Priest looks terrible on every conceivable level already, that recutting the film feels like placing a turd on top of a turd and then polishing that new megaturd. Then Sony, by adding pointless 3-D in post, has decided that they actually needed to shit all over their newly polished megaturd because it just wasn’t done yet. Sony, more than any other studio this year, should flat out be ashamed of themselves. I was so angered that following the film, I didn’t bother to recycle my 3-D glasses. I systematically broke them and stomped on them. Why would I want to contribute the recycling of something that is quite honestly trash? I am beyond angered that in some parts of the world people will be forced to pay for this film to watch it in 3-D because they will have no other options. It is so pointless that one can take the glasses off and the picture looks almost the exact same, and if that doesn’t damn the movie with faint praise, I just don’t know what will.
Now for all the faults of the movie itself. Stewart is clearly playing without any original ideas in his deck and he seems content to just mimic those that have come before him, but he is never up to the task. He can’t handle bombast or dystopia. He can’t handle a religious allegory or a western. It was as if he just decided to stop trying to make sense of his own work part way through filming and simply went through the motions. He doesn’t even bother to get one of the several hundred films he tries stuffing into these 82 minutes right. As for the performances, no one escapes with any dignity by the end of this one. Bettany is doing a terrible Eastwood as Dirty Harry impression. Karl Urban set a record for a preview audience laughing at a screening by eliciting laughter before he even finished saying his first line (which is also the first line in the film, in an estimated elapsed time of maybe 15 seconds). Maggie Q and Cam Gigandent are either reading off cue cards or are trying to remember that morning’s rewrites. As for Christopher Plummer, he at least has enough sense to have taken a part that probably only took one day to shoot, and just does what he does best before going full on Skeletor in the final scene. That scene and a brief cameo from Brad Dourif as an old school travel snakeoil salesman save the film from the zero star review it was going to get. Congrats Priest, you are now the worst mainstream movie of 2011. Now don’t go screwing this up like you screwed everything else up.
Rating: 
Rated 14A
Cast: Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q
Directed by: Scott Charles Stewart
Top image: A scene from Priest. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
