Review of Priest (2011) by Matt K — 05 Jun 2012

With Legion's anticlimactic rumblings failing to consign him completely to green-screen b-list mediocrity, Paul Bettany reprises the role of stultifying figure of religious awe in Priest, where his talents are again wasted.

To spare the cerebral torpor of actually watching Priest, imagine a director - let's say, for example, Scott Stewart - who fuses together the worst elements from The Matrix, Judge Dredd and Blade, to get bums on seats in the multiplexs, and keep the gears and cogs of Factory Hollywood turning...

Yes, we have another post-nuclear apocalyptic Earth where humanity has retreated behind the safety of massive cgi walls, after 'the war', this time fought against mankind's age-old foes - the vampires. Does this make sense yet?

'THE WAR IS ETERNAL.

HIS MISSION IS.

JUST THE BEGINNING.'.

The film's tagline, as with the dialogue, is awkward and generic. Bettany's eponymous character is compounded by theological dogma and overstatement. Both he and Karl Urban utter dramatically prophetic lines with some degree of embarrassment, because the script is as poor as the premise of the storyline is clumsy. And after subjecting myself to the special features, it becomes apparent Scott Stewart was more engrossed in employing an army of geeks to create the formulaic weapons and vehicles of Priest, which he terms as in the style of 'functional brutality', than he was ensuring the film actually made sense. Which it doesn't. At any point. And doesn't contradict itself. Which it does. At every point.

And then there are the vampires themselves, which come directly from the Hellboy/I am Legend mind-numbingly blank and poorly rendered school of computer animation. But hey, the weapons are cool aren't they? You see the neat thing he does with the bible, and the tiny crucifixs that turn into shuriken stars? This is armament-porn for premature ejaculators. Adherents to the noble legacy of the vampire legend are driving miniature stakes into Scott Stewart voodoo dolls, as yet another grey, muscular, eyeless mass with dripping pixel-fangs screeches about breaking cgi rocks, failing to be either remotely sinister or convincing. Falling short on both counts induces the kind of resentful comedy that can only be derived from a truly poor film.

Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Christopher Plummer, and that bloke who used to be Jim Daniels from Neighbours: civilisation is waiting for you, beyond the wasteland of bad films. Please walk towards it.