DVD Reviews

Priest - Blu-ray Review

By Patrick Luce Aug 28, 2011, 16:31 GMT

In a post-apocalyptic world, a savage war between man and vampire raged for centuries. A warrior priest (Paul Bettany) receives word of fresh attacks but now it`s personal, his niece has been kidnapped by a new hive of merciless vampires. To save her, he must break his vow of peace and hunt down the hive before it\'s too late. Based on the acclaimed graphic novel and packed with bloodthirsty action, ...more

Priest takes a stab at blending the vampire genre with mix of sci-fi and western elements, but the results fall short. Instead of something groundbreaking and fresh, the film feels weighted down by bad CGI, editing and close-ups of the Priest warriors that feel left over from a Star Wars prequel.

The film does have some fun moments, but the premise seemed more entertaining than the end of the results.

Directed by Scott Charles Stewart from a screenplay by Cory Goodman and based on Min-Woo Hyung graphic novel series' "Priest," the film stars Paul Bettany (who is becoming a religious action icon thanks to films like this and Legion), Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q, Lily Collins, Brad Dourif, Stephen Moyer, Christopher Plummer, and Alan Dale.

The movie opens with great animation that sets up the story explaining that humans and vampires have been at war for centuries with the vampires living in hives (like bees) and the humans struggling to rid the world of the beast. The animation spans from medieval knights to modern warfare. The human are weaker and slower and on the losing end of the battle until the Priest order is created by the Catholic Church.

The Priests were specially trained warriors who used the power of the church along with all kinds of weapons (no guns) and martial arts to combat the vampires. Slowly, the war is turned until the vampires are rounded up and put in reservations. As a result, the world has been burned over to a desert like landscape and humans have taken up residence in walled cities under the protection of the church – which now rules like the government. With the vampire scourge dealt with, the Priest order is disbanded.

During the opening sequence, we are introduced to Bettany’s Priest character as he is ambushed in a vampire hive and one of his companions is taken. The film then jumps to a farmstead where Bettany’s brother (Stephen Moyer) and his family are trying to grow crops in the burned out soil. While having an argument with his teenaged daughter Lucy (Collins), the family is attacked by vampires and Lucy is taken.

Back in the big city, Priest is approached by Hicks (Gigandet) and told about the attack. Hicks is in love with Lucy and wants Priest's help to get her back from the vampires. Priest goes to Monsignor Orelas (Plummer - in a wasted role) for permission for the Priest order to go after the vampires.

Orelas denies that vampires are still a menace and refuses to allow Priest to leave the city. Naturally, Priest heads out after his niece and Hicks joins him - even though he isn't quite up to Priest's vampire killing skills. The Catholic Church sends the other Priest, including Maggie Q's Priestess, to stop Priest.

Rather than hunt Priest, Priestess joins him and Hicks as they start to realize Lucy’s kidnapping is part of a bigger vampire plot and the mindless vampire threat could be bigger than ever. In truth, we discover the vampires are on board a speeding train and being led by Black Hat (Urban) – a former Priest who was turned by the vampire queen when Bettany’s Priest failed to rescue him.

The movie speeds along at a somewhat predictable pace to a final showdown between Priest and Black Hat as the train rushes to the big city. While Priest and Black Hat fight it out Matrix’s style on top of the train, Hicks steps up to the plate and kills his way to rescue Lucy, and Priestess races ahead to attempt to blow up the train before it hits the city.

While Priest doesn’t quite live up to its potential, the movie has several cool elements that kept me interested in it from start to finish. I enjoyed the blending of the western and horror genre and the way the film reminded me of the John Wayne classic The Searchers – where Wayne’s character searches for his niece who was kidnapped by Indians but might be more driven to kill her by the film’s ending.

Bettany is getting rather comfortable in the action hero role, and does his best to make the Priest character mysterious and mystical (think a Jedi but with crosses). His Priest character is a man of few words, has no remorse when killing a vampire creature, and can handle just about any situation. He is also totally lacking in fear, but haunted by the memory of the ambush that led to Ubran’s character becoming Black Hat.

Maggie Q and Gigandet are decent in their roles as side characters, but they do little add to the story.

Where the film falters is in the bad CGI of the vampire creatures (which look like leftovers from a Resident Evil game) and Urban’s performance as Black Hat. I liked how the filmmakers attempted to make the vampires different from other films in the genre, but the CGI doesn’t work and they end up just looking fake.

Urban attempts to make Black Hat into Eastwood’s The Man With No Name character – which ties into the film’s western film but is laughable towards the film’s end.

By the time the movie is over, it has lost most of the cool themes it had going for it, and is just another easily forgettable action flick. Scott Charles Stewart (who also directed Bettany in Legion) keeps the pace fast so you don't have time to dwell on the film's weaker points, but it is not enough to save it from bad CGI and weak character development (despite a last minute revelation about the Lucy character and the talented cast of character actors).

The film looks solid on Blu-ray and comes loaded with bonus material. Features include audio commentary, deleted and extended Scenes, and several looks at the making of the movie and how it was brought to the screen.

Priest had several things working for it, but failed to fully achieve them on the screen. Bettany and company do solid work in their roles, but the film might have worked better as a television series. Instead, bad CGI and weak plot elements kill any chance it had of being great or memorable.

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