Priest is the sort of movie you walk into knowing full well its IQ is significantly less than the bucket of popcorn balanced in your lap. About all you can hope for in this situation is that it will also be fun. And when it turns out to not be any fun at all, you search frantically for something, anything nice to say about it and settle gratefully on, “Well, at least it was short.”
Priest exists on another world in which human beings have always co-existed with vampires. Well, co-existed is too polite a word. After centuries of hostility, the planet is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Humans have the upper hand…for now. With the remaining vampires locked in fortress-like reservations, a few hearty settlers have left the confines of the dystopic cities for the promise of a better life on the frontier. However, alone and vulnerable, many are falling to fresh vampire attacks. Refusing to sit by while his family and friends die, one priest (Paul Bettany) from the warrior caste that originally drove the vampires into the reservations defies his holy orders to stay within the city walls and heads out to do what he does best—kill bloodsuckers. He is joined by a local sheriff (Cam Gigandet) with an itchy trigger finger and a former ecclesiastical colleague (Maggie Q), who has also lost her sadistic sense of purpose. What they find on the frontier, however, is a diabolical plot beyond reckoning.
To say Priest is based on the Korean graphic novel by Min-woo Hyung is an insult to John Ford’s The Searchers, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Joss Whedon’s Firefly, and a caravan of other inspirations that Min-woo Hyung and all those responsible for this waste of time ripped off. While I have no problem with and, in fact, enjoy repurposing classic films in disparate genres, Priest is so bland, inelegant and sloppy that one cannot even respect the fact that at least the film had the good sense to aim high in its pilfering.
Instead of being clever and interesting, as Priest had the potential to be, it’s dark, dingy and uninspired, saddled with an exceedingly dumb script, and paced awkwardly as if it is just two acts, giving the feel of a beginning and end but no middle into which we can comfortably settle. Ignoring the fact that Christopher Plummer shows up in an extended cameo (hey, we all have bills to pay), Bettany would be wise to turn down any further offers from Scott Stewart, who also directed him in the only slightly better Legion.
If Priest was trying to say something serious about organized religion—a serious issue indeed—it fails. While it fills the screen with a sort of Big Brother Church State in which every other line of dialogue is “To go against the church is to go against God!” (yes, we get it already), Priest castrates itself of any potency by trafficking in stereotypes rather than three-dimensional characters. If you can’t win a philosophical argument without turning your opponent into a ridiculous caricature of evil, you are not worthy to engage in the debate in the first place.
© Copyright 2011 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
Directed by Scott StewartStarring: Paul Bettany, Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q, Karl Urban, Lily Collins, Stephen Moyer, Christopher Plummer, Brad Dourif, Alan Dale, Madchen Amick
Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images and brief strong language.
Running Time: 87 minutes
4 responses so far ↓
1 Sassafras // Jul 21, 2011 at 4:46 pm
You are sniveling waste of flesh. Get a life and quit being such a negative dick
2 Jack // Jul 24, 2011 at 1:54 am
Hi I’m Brandon Fibbs. I’m a retard and I’m too good for most movies. Thanks for being stupid enough to listen to my review. You are an idiot too. ;0)
3 Brandon Fibbs // Jul 28, 2011 at 10:37 am
Bravo. Indeed, I have rarely, if ever, encountered a pair of better reasoned, more articulate takedowns of my writing. I applaud you both and bow to your obvious mental and cinematic superiority.
4 Angela // Nov 14, 2011 at 11:29 pm
I often wonder why critics watch films from genres they clearly either don’t understand or have no true appreciation of.
Priest does feel as though it lacks in plot through some areas, but in general, it’s a movie about a priest killing vampires. There’s only so much plot can be derived from that concept.
As a fan of horror movies, I thought it was refreshing to see a vampire film where the vampires are actually portrayed to be scary, rather than the romantisised beings they are all too often seen as in a lot of recent vamp films.
Perhaps it would do the reviewer some good to be less arrogant about his own perceptions and be slightly more objective, instead of picking out the only obvious flaw with the film and hanging on to it like it’s the thread of life.
I believe you recieved the earlier comments due to your opening statement – “Priest is the sort of movie you walk into knowing full well its IQ is significantly less than the bucket of popcorn balanced in your lap.”
It implies that to enjoy Priest, the viewers must be of equally low intelligence. Which is insulting, and makes you appear as though you have a superiority complex.
As a horror fan, I enjoyed Priest. It wasn’t a deep, thought provoking film. But then it wasn’t meant to be.
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