Releasing Studio: Sony Pictures (Screen Gems)
Disc/Transfer Specifications: 1080p High Definition; 2.40:1; Region 1 (U.S.) Release
Video Codec: MPEG-4 MVC
Tested Audio Track: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Rating: Not Rated
Director: Scott Stewart
Starring Cast: Paul Bettany, Maggie Q, Brad Dourif, Christopher Plummer
THE WAR IS ETERNAL.
PLOT ANALYSIS:
Let’s take a look at the phenom that’s currently riding a tidal wave of success, both on the silver screen and the TV show circuit – what I’m referring to is the public’s utterly fanatical fascination with vampires and the different takes on them. , even a cousin of mine is so wrapped up in this utter she herself believes she’s a vampire – of course, this is a cousin that lives across the country, far from my line of sight, whom I never have to deal with, but that’s how close this ridiculous obsession has hit for many people. Where early pieces of cinema portrayed Dracula and others of his kind as Euro trash, babbling in seductive drawls later imitated by the likes of characters on
Sesame Street and decked out in, as James Woods would say, “rented formal wear,” the evolution of these mysterious beings from motion picture perspectives is nothing if not interesting and wildly varying – we have seen different filmmakers’ takes on the vampire concept, ranging from
John Carpenter’s Vampires, From Dusk ‘Till Dawn, Fright Night, Van Helsing and
30 Days of Night to the more current teen/20-something oriented
Twilight film franchise, which has contributed to this “necessity” to create cable shows such as HBO’s
True Blood and a gaggle of network TV spinoffs. Oh – let’s not forget about the immortal
Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, shall we?
What is this fascination between young people and the existence of vampires? Are we to believe these idiots populating high schools and middle schools today have been infiltrated by actual blood sucking creatures? Whatever the reason for this explosive popularity in film culture vamps, kids thinking and believing they’re vamps and the utter that populates our broadcast TV airwaves that deals with vamps, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a hot culture commodity today. Scott Stewart’s
Priest, based on what has been called an “acclaimed graphic novel,” takes yet a different approach to telling a vampire story, complete with eyeless, hairless CGI creatures that are terrifying enough on their own without being bloodsuckers of the night – but like so many other films that are supposedly based on these “graphic novels” a la
30 Days of Night and
Constantine just to name two,
Priest feels like one of these films…actually more like a mix between
Mad Max, Resident Evil and some future-world occult picture. I liked the trailers when I saw them, but wasn’t expecting much in the way of entertainment once I sat down with the Blu-ray – but you know something? I liked
Priest a lot, and will be buying it for, hopefully, this Halloween season.
As it is with so many of these films based on the graphic novels,
Priest was a difficult project to bring to the screen in that its storyline and timelines are all over the place and just downright abstract – if you watch the special features on the Blu-ray, you can get a sense of how the filmmakers were attempting to create a place and time that is indeed strange, as it’s some kind of post-apocalyptic world that shows hints of American history with old Western towns and sheriffs, yet also portrays people on nitrous-injected super cycles racing through deserts surrounded by technological gadgets. There were obvious hints of
Mad Max and
Demolition Man on display here, with visions of a deserted, wasteland society even prevalent in films like
Resident Evil: Extinction. As the viewer, we’re not sure if it’s the future or the past, or somewhere inbetween – but the idea is, portrayed through an effective opening sequence done in interesting animated graphics and detailed narration, that there has always been a war of man against vampires, and when man wasn’t strong enough to fight the creatures any longer, the church trained special “priests” with extraordinary abilities and powers to hunt them down and slay them. The priests are hooded warriors with tattooed crosses on their foreheads, not wielding any firearms, but instead using acrobatic strengths and specialized weapons to cut through the flesh of the vamps and kill them. However, eventually, society was pushed underground, and the church became a totalitarian presence, pretty much controlling everything and everyone, forcing them to enter computerized confessionals in herds like cattle, while at the same time forcing the priests underground as well, and mixed into society.
Into this world comes Paul Bettany’s superstrong priest character, who ends up losing one of his team members in a vampire “hive” during what we think is a dream sequence in the opening frames of the film – the notion is that this man who was once a priest has been taken to the underground lair of this vampire hive where the queen they have been hunting transforms him into the first “human vampire.” That is, he can walk upright and walk like a human, looking like a human if not for the pointy teeth and yellow eyes, much like how this creature has been portrayed in most of the Hollywood takes. In contrast, the actual vamps of
Priest, as I mentioned, are eyeless “fleshy” looking beasts, moving with lightning fast reflexes and sporting ridiculously sharp teeth – I suppose a nice contrast to the strange-talking vamps of
30 Days of Night who were effective in their own right. In another early sequence, a family is sitting around their table in an “outpost” of this deserted society, when a vampire attack takes place, wounding the husband and father, while killing the mother and wife and abducting the teenage daughter. Bettany discovers later on, after a visit by a sheriff of an outlaw “town” who apparently was the teen girl’s boyfriend or something, that the man wounded in this attack was actually Bettany’s brother, and the girl has been kidnapped and taken by vampires. Bettany is instructed by the church and its elder leader (Christopher Plummer) not to take any action on his own when he asks the clergy to reinstate his priest powers and licenses so he can search for what he believes is his niece. When the church refuses to reinstate him as a priest, Bettany goes on the mission with this sheriff anyway. When word spreads back to the church that Bettany has disobeyed them, they enlist the remaining members of Bettany’s team – including the deliciously fit and trim Maggie Q – to go after him and shut him down.
This sheriff and Bettany enter what appears to be a town out of America’s Old West period, where a salesman offering holy water and other anti-vampire solutions (the great Brad Dourif,
The Exorcist III, Graveyard Shift) is selling this stuff out of his horse drawn wagon. When Bettany and the sheriff run him out of this town, it’s only a matter of time until the human vampire responsible for Bettany’s niece’s abduction, and a former member of Bettany’s priest team, arrives in the town along with some other nasty vamps to feast on some flesh. The other three remaining priests from Bettany’s team confront this new powerful human/vampire hybrid, but he’s too strong for even them, and they’re systematically murdered and crucified in the middle of the town.
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