Priest (**)


Directed by: Scott Stewart
Starring: Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q, Lily Collins, Christopher Plummer, Brad Dourif, Alan Dale, Madchen Amick, Stephen Moyer
Seen: May 25th 2011

** Out of ****

In a bleak futuristic world there are two species, humans and vampires. Vampires are feral and far more powerful than humans, and for this reason the humans created the order of the Priests for protection. Fierce warriors with the Cross tattooed on their foreheads, they are widely feared, humans who can fight well enough to defeat multiple vampires. They wear Friar Tuck outfits and hunt vampires – in the entertaining animated opening sequence this is relayed, with the vampires’ annihilation and the imprisonment of the remainder told of. A quick scene shows a group of priests entering the vampire stronghold Mira Sola, and they are overwhelmed, one of their ilk dragged back into the colony while the others, led by Priest (Bettany) helplessly look on. The church here, much like the church of the middle ages, “protects” the people, but after a certain time of quiet they seem to forget of the scourge and disband the priests, abandoning them to solitary lives of being shunned for their capabilities. Eventually the church refuses to acknowledge the existence of the threat outside their secure city walls – only secure because of the hundreds of miles of empty barren desert surrounding the cities that vampires would not be able to cross because of sunlight.

Priest receives news from a young sheriff, Hicks (Gigandet), that his niece Lucy (Collins) has been kidnapped by vampires, and the two set off across the wastelands towards the small town where Priest’s brother (Moyer) lay mortally wounded, to try and save the girl. They run across a small vampire colony, by day only visibly inhabited by familiars, creepy humans who have submitted themselves as slaves to the vampires, but this is only a small hiccup for them. Meanwhile the church has disavowed Priest for going on this mission, sending four other priests after him, one of them named simply Priestess (Maggie Q). In the hunt, three of the priests are brutally massacred by something the priests have not come across before, Black Hat (Urban), who has a motive for going after Priest’s family. With Black Hat marshalling a seemingly invincible force of vampires to the big city, Priest, Priestess and Hicks catch up with them, and battle ensues.

Priest is at points impressive, but the suspension of disbelief mechanism is often relied on too heavily. The movie is a throwback to old-school over-the-top action where no attention is given to physics, and all attention to attempts at looking cool. The actors are merely jackets worn by generic characters, and it occasionally strikes me as funny that actors are all right with being portrayed as they are. The movie is a meagre 87 minutes long, and in that runtime you realise that what happens in the movie is only a beginning, a prologue to an actual and much bigger story. I am getting tired of this trend from movies, books, TV series, etc. The trend that makes writers think they can stretch a story across multiple books or movies to make more money – only to have them end up with a sub-par or decidedly average first movie unlikely to receive a sequel because of its lukewarm reception. I say tell the whole story, make the movie immersive, an experience, not just a lame introduction to something unlikely to ever see the light of day. Priest is like that, a short movie short on story and short on potential for a decently made sequel because of this inherent flaw, it will soon fade into oblivion.

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