Climbing Higher Pictures

When you look ahead at all the different tentpoles coming out this summer, it’s easy to let the middle tier flicks fall through the cracks. One such film, Priest, is finally making it to theaters after being delayed almost a full year from it’s original release date. Why the delay you ask? So that the 3D conversion doesn’t suck, and let me tell you, it’s quite impressive. Does the rest of the narrative hold up?

Priest Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: B

Scott Stewart has had more than a little mountain to climb on his way into Hollywood. The former visual effects supervisor and writer/director of Legion managed to get his first feature off the ground with the help of Paul Bettany, his lead once again in Priest. His second film was already in production when Legion underperformed at the box office, leaving the production company no choice but to finish things out and hope for the best. The movie got pushed back almost a full year from its original release date, allowing for a 3D post-conversion that may aide in making back the budget. Stewart didn’t shoot 3D out of the gate because he wanted to use anamorphic lenses, as well as get the tactile quality that only film can provide. The results are actually quite impressive, as is Bettany’s overall badass quotient. Is it enough to help elevate Priest to the peak of the genre?

It’s very clear what the references are. There’s the Blade Runner cityscape, the Star Wars desert, the spaghetti western train sequence, and even some gooey grey vampire monsters thrown in for good measure. Each one is well conceived and well executed, but it’s hard to judge if they actually work in the film itself, or if the years of film-watching baggage are giving the set pieces their gravitas. Talking scenes generally exist for expositional reasons, but when the movie quiets down or gets loud, the whole thing starts to work in unexpected ways. The real Achilles heel is Cam Gigandet, who is a perfectly serviceable actor in other parts, but is just woefully miscast here to add some sort of young hunk appeal. He’s just not believable as a sheriff, and especially not someone who thinks he’s Bettany’s equal. The audience pretty much spends the film wishing he would just shut up or sit down, and he never gets more than a handful of redeeming moments before the credits roll. A total waste of space.

The rest of the cast really make the effort to ground the film, and with actors of this caliber it’s easy to look past some (though certainly not most) of the dialogue inadequacies. Christopher Plummer makes for quite the imposing Pope, or “Monsignor”, and Maggie Q gives us a fresh perspective on the warrior clergy. Her scenes with Bettany almost get the emotional resonance of the story humming, but fall just short of any real impact. It’s a shame too, because on mute the scenes may have had a lot of power, but bad writing really spoils the moments. Easily the best acting in the film comes from Karl Urban, who finally gets the chance to really dig his teeth (pun intended) into a villainous role. He never gets to the point of chewing scenery, but you can’t help but smile as he licks his lips and blinks his golden contacts.

As with many medium budget genre flicks, the money just isn’t there for a proper third act finale, but Priest plays its cards well and doesn’t bit off more than it can chew. In fact, this may be one of the more satisfying endings we’ve had recently, if only because it never raises the bar high enough for us to be underwhelmed. It keeps the endgame in the strike zone at all times, and there’s a lot to be appreciated in knowing the limits of the story you can tell. Though the film is based upon a graphic novel, it serves as little more than inspiration here, giving the director a chance to play with all of the different components of building a sci-fi world. For the most part, I’d say he succeeded, and the movie works more often than it doesn’t.

Given the nature of PG-13 horror, it’s also quite bloody and violent, something I’m sure could’ve been much more extreme if given a chance at an R-rating. The boo-scares start to get old at about the halfway mark, and though it’s nice to have some genuine suspense with off-screen kills and sound design, there’s a more potent film buried underneath the appealing-to-pre-teen-boys audience. I’m extremely interested in what comes next, and recommend Priest as a great matinee film to pass some time until the next wave of the summer season hits. You could certainly do much worse.