Matt's Priest Review

Directed by Scott Stewart
Written by Cory Goodman
Starring Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Maggie Q, and Cam Gigandet

 Walking into Priest you expect two things. This is going to be bad but it could still turn out to be a fun summer film. I had low expectations but I thought that maybe this could be the next Daybreakers. Not looking foreword to it but it turns out to be smart, scary, and just a great film. So which one is it, bad fun or the next Daybreakers. First lets go over the plot.
 In the future, the war between humans and vampires has devastated the world. The Church, the future incarnation of the Roman Catholic Church, created an elite spiritual warrior organization, dubbed "Priests", who were capable of slaying vampires. The majority of the vampires were killed while the remainder were placed in reservations. The Church created isolated, heavily guarded cities. No longer needing the Priests' services, and fearing their own weapon the Church disbanded them. Outside the cities humans live outside the totalitarian control of the Church.

 One day an unnamed Priest (Paul Bettany), is approached by Hicks (Cam Gigandet), the sheriff of a nearby town. Hicks tells him that his brother Owen was mortally wounded, sister-in-law (and ex girlfriend, Shannon) were killed by vampires and Priest's niece Lucy (Lucy Pace they would keep the same name) was kidnapped. Hicks asks for Priest's assistance in tracking down Lucy. Priest goes against the wishes of Monsignor Orelas, the Church's leader, to do so. Monsignor Orelas then sends a group of four Priests led by Priestess to capture him and bring him back, dead or alive.

 So Priest is sadly not Daybreakers which disappointed me, but it is still a ok film. The film is held back from cult classic status is the films writing. It seems that films script is half baked with a pretty cool pretty cool premise but the execution is generic making it like alot of different films. So its generic but how is the rest of the film. To answer that, terrible but it was fun.

 Priest is sure to get plenty of Razzie nominations for its acting especially by Cam Gigandet who I honestly think was hungover or sleep walking throughout the film. He is just so bad and can not have the right tone with a line. He is suppose to sound baffled and he just sounds like a zombie. Karl Urban really plays up the camp factor but I really liked that. I thought the film was a to serous and he added more fun to it.

 Like I said the serous tone ruins the film. Its either you make a well made script with good acting (Daybreakers, Blade Runner) or you just forget all of that stuff and play up the camp factor (Drive Angry, Snakes on a Plane). The film chooses serous and fails at it.

 I have pretty much just been negative so now I will be positive. The film is beautiful with great huge set pieces   that look great. Scott Stewart really has an eye for visuals maybe becuase he did that before he started to direct movies. Like I said Karl Urban does a good job but so do Paul Bettany and Maggie Q who are total bad asses.

 The action is stylized to the extreme and I like it. Things like Priest shurkens flying in the air were beautiful to see and did not annoy me like they mostly do in Zach Snyder films. The film also has a lot of small details in script that are nice to see like how the Priest could get the girl but dose not becuase he knows what he is and that is a Priest.

 So overall Priest is a mixed bag, alot of fun but really stupid and terribly written. Since I am split on the film I am giving the film a rental or a rating of.

2/4 Stars