Not even prayer saves Priest

There’s a big difference between a good movie and a movie that you like. You can greatly enjoy watching any movie by Adam Sandler but that doesn’t necessarily make it good. Conversely, you can hate even the haughtiest Shakespearean drama put together by masters of directing and dramaturgy and acted by the brightest lights of the world of performing arts.

You can chalk Priest up to a briefly interesting but soon-forgotten experience. It’s based on a Korean comic book and has nothing to do with modern religion, despite the fact Paul Bettany is the star. It seems like practically his entire career is based on his stark albino ascetic appearance, played up to great effect in movies like The Da Vinci Code, The Reckoning and Legion, a movie also directed by Scott Stewart. It is otherwise so similar to this one that they are almost interchangeable.

A Vampire War in the future has turned the world into a post-apocalyptic Mad Max dystopia of deserts and angry neo-settlers. The Church began an order of martial arts-warrior priests to be the front line of defence and stave off further vampire invasions. Think of this as Priests vs. Vampires, instead of Cowboys vs. Aliens.

After some time, most of the few remaining vampires were imprisoned and the people live in city strongholds, so the priests are disbanded.

That is, until one such warrior-priest named Ivan (Paul Bettany) is told of a vampire attack, killing his brother and sister-in-law. His niece is kidnapped and the priest feels a higher calling, that of family. He is told by Monsignor Orelas (Christopher Plummer), the head of the church, to forego his mission or face excommunication. You can only imagine what Ivan tells him back.

Complicating his mission is a vampire spokesperson named Black Hat and a trio of other priests who are sent by Orelas to hunt Ivan down and return him to the city. You can pretty much predict the entire plot of this formulaic enterprise right down to the twist ending and the overly choreographed yet incredibly brief fight scenes. Sure, this is an action movie with some scary bad guys and vicious computer-generated beasts, but the budget just wasn’t there.

It’s more like Resident Evil or the recent Sucker Punch than Van Helsing, which was what I expected. That doesn’t mean it’s any better or any worse. The movie pretty much exists to tell some kind of comic book or video game story illustrated with martial arts sequences and appearances by weird and frightening creatures. So what? No more attention is paid to the dialogue or the plot than is necessary. This makes it one of those perfect for popcorn popping movies that are incredibly slow when the characters aren’t fighting. It all crescendos into a grand showdown that you can see coming from many miles away.

One high note is I did enjoy Plummer. He brought a combination of sinister menace and dubious authority, exactly what his character called for. It feels like Bettany is getting typecast but that’s only because he’s really good at playing these characters and he keeps getting these roles. As for the vampire genre, hopefully, someone will shine a light and buff it up with some changes. Vampire musicals, anyone?