REVIEW: Priest

The first line of this movie is ' I don't know about this place, it feels like....our grave.' Yeah.

Someone needs to give Paul Bettany an intervention. He's a talented actor who's given enough great performances to be cut a fair amount of shit, but this is becoming unacceptable. Bettany's name has become synonymous with bad B-Movies , pretty much since 2003's Master And Commander, his resume reads like it could be Julian Sands' in the 90's. Just horrible (Except For Young Victoria, am I right guys. Holler.) What makes it even more painful is that Bettany is usually good in these terrible movies, he makes a memorable bad guy in the otherwise odious Da Vinci Code, in the borderline retarded religious horror movie Legion he was OK, right? He never allows me to write him off and then continues to shit all over that lingering good will. Well fuck you Paul Bettany, I don't care if you were once good to me, all you do is smash my face in with a baseball bat. I'll be getting daddy's shotgun now.

It doesn't surprise me one bit that Priest comes from the same guy who made Legion, both are religious horror movies terrified of their subject matter, both are movies that have no idea how to craft an engaging character, and both become vapid CGI spectacles seemingly existing solely to exhibit effects. I suppose Priest would like to call itself a remake of The Searchers, putting Bettany in the John Wayne role and Cam Gidanget as the ingénue rookie, but its just way too gormless for that, and to be honest the movie doesn't even stage a decent action sequence, possibly excepting a scene with co-star Maggie Q, and a nifty animated prologue aside is just boring. Flat, same-old fantasy land nothing, where you care about nothing and no-one. Sterile, is the word I would use. Even Bettany isn't even that good, trying too hard to be the tough guy and instead just coming off a little flat, and plus he isn't really the hero of this movie. Maggie Q is the hero of this movie. While Bettany just gets the shit kicked out of him by Karl Urban, Q destroys ten vampires on motorbikes, an entire train full of zombie vampires and Karl Urban. Bettany is a pussy compared to this bitch. The movie spends its whole running time telling me what a badass Bettany is, only for him to fail and be bailed out by a tiny Asian lady.

Karl Urban makes for a pretty vacuous, empty bad guy. I concede the writing's not the best but there's enough here for a fun performance, but he's so frickin humorless. I gather from a casual piece of mockery I engaged in on Facebook with regards to Mr Urban that he has his fans out there, who won't have a bad word said against Mr Urban or his many great performances, particularly in the likes of Doom and Pathfinder. I use this forum to apologize thoroughly, and to confirm that yes being the 4th best performance in Star Trek absolves you of any and all crimes against movies and definitely not to say that whenever Mr Urban is in a movie, its because they're saving money on actors to spend on CGI. This movie is lame and you shouldn't see it.

Rating: 4/10