Director: Scott Stewart
Piegonhole: Action / Comic Book / Apocalypse
Basics: The war between humans and vampires has raged for centuries. The earth has been severely damaged and the remaining humans have been forced to live in walled cities ruled by a group called The Church. Superhuman warriors trained by The Church called Priests finally turn the tide of the war with most of the vampires being killed, and the remaining ones being placed in prison camps called Reservations. The Church then disbands the Priests declaring the war over.
The vampires were not, however, eradicated. With a rebuilt vampire "army", an evil super-human (credited as The Hat) decides to wage another war on the human population. A girl named Lucy (Lily Collins) is kidnapped from her home out in the Wasteland by The Hat (Urban), so Priest (Bettany) now has to get involved because Lucy is his niece. The Church informs Priest he is not authorized to do this, so he in turn breaks his vow and proceeds forward to battle the rising evil. Priest is based on a Korean comic.
My Take: This is a reasonably paced film, with several good action sequences and above average special effects. The vampires are monster-like creatures instead of being sexy humans with fangs, which is a nice variance in this time of Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries. The movie does look and feel like a comic book come-to-life with the scenery, stunt work, predictability and overly simplistic dialogue.
**spoiler alert**
After Priest leaves, The Church sends 4 more reactivated Priests to stop Priest. This group of 4 is led by Priestess (Maggie Q) who quickly splits from the other 3 to assist Priest in his quest, because she has feelings for him. The Hat, we learn is actually a former Priest, and former friend of Priest, who was captured by the vampires and turned into a superhuman-vampire-like creature by being fed the blood of the queen vampire. The Hat's goal is to lead the vampires into the human cities to eradicate humans once and for all. After several action sequences including a final stand on a moving train The Hat and the vampires are destroyed by Priest and Priestess. Lucy is also rescued.
In the final scene Priest informs the head of The Church that the queen vampire was not on the train and may be building another vampire army, so all the Priests need to be reinstated.
What was lacking: The movie was only 87 minutes long, so there was little to no development of anything plotwise outside of stringing together the action sequences. We learn almost nothing about human life inside the walled cities, or about humans trying to reestablish outside the walls in the Wasteland (as it is called).- The characters and dialogue, as I mentioned, were so overly simplistic that I think it detracted from the movie. I think they could have cut half of the script and relied more on "strong, silent" action than to have dumbed this down to the level it was presented.
- As I am often fond of saying, I wonder what hit the cutting room floor, because there were multiple well-established actors in Priest, that had almost no screen time. Specifically - Christopher Plummer, Brad Dourif, and Stephen Moyer.
- The reveal about the creation of The Hat seemed a little weak. There was no development about his proverbial rise to power. It is possible the back story was developed a little better, but the footage did not make it to the screen. Even weaker than these issues was his eventual demise.
What did work: As I already noted, the action sequences pretty much drove the film. I don't know how much of their own stunts the actors did, but the scenes were entertaining.
- The sets, props, costumes, and scenery did work well to create the burnt out, dystopian world that these characters lived in.
- I am glad, as previously stated, that something different was done with the vampires rather than some lame variation of an infected human with fangs.
Recommendation: If you like the look and feel of a comic book/graphic novel style movie, the you should enjoy Priest. It is lacking in depth and development, but is still an enjoyable film. It plays out like the idealistic cop /warrior/ fighter who has to break the rules to save his family "story". In this case the bad guys happen to be vampires. PG-13 rating is for violence, and "gore" - mostly from when the vampires are killed.
Extras:
- The movie was held for release in multiple instances - which usually is not a good sign
- The theatrical release was in 3D - which may have added a little something to the presentation
- I watched the standard release on cable. There is an unrated version on DVD/Blu-Ray that may offer something more to the story.
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