Priest

I have seen dozens and dozens of movies based on comic strips, comic books and graphic novels. But, Priest is perhaps the first time I've seen one for which I haven't read the source material first... so unlike most of my comic film reviews, this one is not informed by any preconceived notions of content.

The film is about a future society after a vampire apocalypse. Humans live in walled towns, and although vampires have been defeated, they decided to put them on reservations instead of eradicating them for some reason. While the church's official position is that the threat is over, for some reason everyone still lives in the walled cities, while outside are a handful of renegade humans and vampires. Into this wasteland, a rogue priest goes off to rescue a kidnapped girl from vampires.

It's essentially, the umpteen-zillionth remake of Richard Matheson's 'I Am Legend' as informed by Matrix style cyberpunk elements. Other obvious antecedents are westerns like High Noon, the Judge Dredd comics (with the clergy substituting for judges - complete with priests riding lawmaster style motorcycles out into the Accursed Earth), and the Vampire Hunter D animes (big time).

Now the first thing you have to know is that it looks good... Hell, it looks great. You can tell it's based off a comic - every scene looks like comic art. But, sadly, it is the latest in a long line of post Matrix movies that puts way too much emphasis on style, wire work, CGI effects etc. and way too little emphasis on consistency and plot. Almost every scene of this movie I found myself asking some question "How did they..." "Why would he..." "Where did that..." etc. And these questions get to the very foundations of the movie. I mean, really, if some ex-priest the church doesn't care about anymore wants to go on a suicide mission outside the the walls of the city... how is that any skin off their nose? What real threat could it be to them? They should be like, 'good riddance'. But no, it apparently threatens their dominion (somehow) so they send other priests to go after him.

All these plot holes wouldn't be so bad if they didn't also go so far over the top with the martial arts and wirework (there's lots of "gimme a break", physics-defying moves - by these non-superhuman priests, in one of the most ridiculous instances, one priest throws chunks of rock into the air which another uses as mid-air steps to run up); over the top CGI (the vampires just had to be twisted CGI monstrosities) and dialogue that is so cliche that almost every line is predictable (seriously, I predicted many of the lines before they were spoken) and makes all the characters seem flat.

Now if you are willing to totally shut your brain off and not ask questions like - 'how exactly did they get so far ahead of a speeding train?' and the like, you might be able to enjoy it, maybe, kind of. But really, would it have killed them to just make it make a little more sense instead of just trying to have everyone look cool?