Review of Calvary (2014) by Max L — 02 May 2014

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

An unblemished priest receives a death threat in the confessional, and is given until Sunday week to set his affairs in order. Honestly, I don't have too much to say about this one. It's from the writer/director of "The Guard", but it's actually far more serious than I would have thought -- there aren't nearly as many laughs as I was expecting -- so it really depends on how invested you get in this man's situation. And for me, maybe it was the main character's indifference to just about everything, but I didn't particularly care. The other characters were boring, and the whole narrative was a little too disjointed for me, just showing how the priest interacts with his community one day at a time. You could probably talk for hours about the scathing critique of corruption within the church and the government, but none of that interests me. Being a Sligo resident myself, I had far more fun recognising the various locations on which the film was shot. :) The ending certainly has a powerful impact, but overall this movie did very little for me. It's not bad by any means, but it's not very engaging either.

My rating: 60%.