Priest

Before I start in on what I think about "Priest" can someone PLEASE write Paul Bettany a comedy or something? Seriously! I'm sure he's happy in his personal life being married to one of the most beautiful women walking but on screen the man it seems isn't allowed to crack even a smile. Not to mention having a thing for playing priests and fallen angels as he does in this hybrid of a movie. I call it a hybrid because it's a combination of so many different genres that it's sometimes hard to keep count and harder still to take this movie seriously at times. I never thought in my wildest dreams that someone would try to mix The Matrix, Mad Max, a spaghetti western, what appears to be Jedi Knights, and a horror story all in the same pot. Paul does his best though to convince you that this is a very serious thing and it should be taken as such.

"Priest" is a movie loosely based on the graphic novels created by Hyung Min-woo about life after the war between vampire and man. For centuries the two species have waged war against each other with the vampires always getting the best of man. That is until the "Church" creates their secret weapon, the priests who are trained in vampire combat They then turn the tide of the conflict and the vampires are rounded up and placed on reservations while man retreats behind walled off mega cities, reservations of their own. The Priests, once the saviours of mankind have been disbanded since the war is over and the church now fears their creation. The Priests are not allowed to speak to each other due to the church's decree and do to so, to go against the church is to go against God.

The movie starts off with a band of Priests led by Paul Bettany, entering the largest hive Mira Soral with orders from the clergy to slay the Queen. Something goes horribly wrong however and the few that survived were lucky to make it out alive. That night haunts Bettany's character and he goes to the automated confessionals to alleviate his mind and his guilt. He then gets word that the woman he once loved and her family were attacked by a vampire hoard out on the plains. Priest (that's Paul's characters name) asks permission to investigate but the church denies his request. Him being the stoic Priest that his, can you guess his next move? That's right reader, he disobeys and fires up the coolest thing in the movie, his Priest sanctioned jet bike.

Along side Bettany in this genre bending film is Karl Urban doing his best Clint Eastwood (it's in his hat), Maggie Q as Priestess (seriously, that's her characters name), Cam Gigandet as Sheriff Hicks, Christopher Plummer as Monsignor Orelas, and Stephen Moyer (yes THAT Stephen Moyer that's in that top rated cable show featuring vampires) as Owen Pace. Directed by Scott Charles Stewart whose last film was "Legion" also starring Paul Bettany as that fallen angel I mentioned earlier, this movie wasn't nearly as stylized as it could have been. The ball was dropped more than a few times on more than a few occasions and to think there may be another one, maybe even two more Priest movies. The score by Christopher Young, the guy who replaced Danny Elfman on Spider Man 3 was decent but nothing to write home about. All in all this was a less than decent film and unless you are a TRUE fan of the graphic novel then I would skip it and if you love the graphic novel then ignore it altogether because it just may piss you off.

See you at the theater.