Movie Review--Priest

"Remember, to go against the church is to go against God."
--Cathedral City announcer, Priest


Yet another example of a squandered premise, Priest introduces a world of warfare between humans and vampires that is filled with religious tyranny.  Priest's worldbuilding, aesthetics, and background themes are crafted well, but the execution is rather generic.  At the very least, the vampires are not the sensual, elegant kind that has become associated with seduction, as they are slimy, animalistic creatures that do not even have any visible eyes.  However, they too are plot devices in a story that has little else other than its visuals that merit praise.


Production Values

The aesthetic tone of the movie is perhaps its strongest aspect, many of the locations showing the visual style in ways that suggest a great deal of information about the world that is not directly stated.  If only the dialogue and plot were as excellent!  Even the film's few action sequences tend to be brief and full of choppy camerawork as one cut is quickly replaced with another.  The acting is mostly better than the action, but inconsistently so.  Paul Bettany, quite a talented actor, has elevated somewhat comparable movies like Legion, but Priest does not see his best performance.  Mediocrity is also the mark of the other main performances.  Maggie Q plays a fellow Priest who is tasked with stopping Bettany's character, Karl Urban plays the primary villain, and even Brad Dourif (Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings and Charles Lee Ray in the original Child's Play) has a minor role.  These are cast members with legitimite promise who seem to have just not been given optimal directing.


Story

As usual, several basic spoilers are below.

In the world of Priest, humans and vampires warred for years, destroying the planet and inflicting many casualties on both sides.  An elite order of Priests were trained to kill vampires, but they were disbanded as a combat class once the vampires were put on "reservations."  A family is attacked years later when a group of vampires suddenly storms their home, killing the parents and abducting their daughter.  A former Priest is contacted about the young woman's capture.  He pursues the vampires in an attempt to free her before she can be infected.


Intellectual Content

A major area called Cathedral City resembles a deteriorating, overcrowded 19th century insustrial town in England, but with a militaristic, authoritarian presence that goes far beyond the legal prescriptions of Mosaic Law.  In order to maintain power, religious leaders teach citizens that to oppose the church is to oppose God, as if traditions, social contructs, and appeals to authority are sound indicators of alignment with God.  The church is not either the Bible or God, yet the needlessly hierarchical structure of Priest's church is managed by officials who add to Biblical commands in numerous ways--ironically, this completely contradicts the Bible itself (Deuteronomy 4:2).

Only at relatively infrequent points does the film specify that the religious order it portrays is "Christianity," or more particularly a drastically distorted version of Christianity, but Western viewers will mostly have an easy time seeing the obvious similarities between the religious hierarchy in Priest and that of the Catholic Church.  Catholicism is far from sound, Biblical theology, of course, with its scores of extra-Biblical traditions and shifting nature.  This makes it all the more fitting that the religious figures in the film clearly mirror Catholic clergy.


Conclusion

For a better Paul Bettany movie with religious themes, see Legion, a film where Bethany plays an angel who defies God during an apocalyptic scenario, ironically, in the name of changing God's mind.  For all of Legion's faults, it is far more unique than Priest, which develops none of its characters beyond the minimum needed to continue the story or introduce stereotypical drama.  Paul Bettany is an actor with genuine talent, yet he, like so many other things, is sinply wasted here.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  In an animated retelling of events prior to those of the main story, humans and vampires are severed into pieces.  Later, when the live action has resumed, an axe is thrown into someone's skull, silver throwing stars are used to slice into vampires, and some antagonists are cut with blades.
 2.  Profanity:  Brad Dourif's character uses "goddamn" and "bitch" in one scene.  "Fucking" is uttered once further in.