In a post-apocalyptic world, a savage war between man and vampire has raged for centuries. A warrior priest receives word of fresh attacks, but now its 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 its too late. Based on the acclaimed graphic novel and packed with bloodthirsty action, this full throttle crusade takes you on the hunt for a deadly new breed of killer.
Priest, like all movies based off of graphic novels, it does so loosely, which may be disappointing to some viewers but it allows for unbiased opinions of both the film and series of novels. Rather than get in depth with the differences between them lets just say you don't have to see one before the other but rather see/read both of them if you have the time.
Those of you with two brain cells to rub together have figured out that I enjoyed the movie, I didn't see it in theaters and truthfully have only read the first volume of the series, but that doesn't mean it is without flaws...
So Priest, a movie directed by Scott Stewart, is based (loosely as stated) on a Korean comic series of the same name. The plot is as follows; since the beginning of time, or shortly there after, humanity has waged a war with vampires. Not your run of the mill vampires, I would say somewhat a middle ground between the Underworld vampire and the 30 Days of Night vampire. "The eyes are the window to the soul" as some say and due to the fact that vampires are born without eyes they are said to have no soul, so they are hunted. I guess you could almost say that this is a retelling of our own history when we ran the native Americans to near extinction and put them in reserves, well the same thing has been done to vampires, but only with the help of the priests. The Priests are a sect of chosen warriors trained by the church in the deadly arts and raised with a healthy hatred for all things fangey, the are the sole reason humanity won the war but after the war they were disbanded and sworn to peace. The Priests were ordered to return to human ways and sought employment but had no skills for anything but warfare, thus they got low level jobs and fade into history. Oh yes did I mention that the war between races has destroyed the very earth? Well yeah, the cities of the past stand as grim reminders of humanities folly in a never-ending desert of pain and sacrifice, while the majority of the world has hidden behind the walls surrounding church governed cities.
So vampires, rise from the reserves and kill (SPOILER ALERT) Paul Bettany's character's brother and his wife, before kidnapping their daughter and galavanting away on a train full of an army of vampires and assorted cutlery. I was actually quite surprised when the movie turned out to have a couple plot twists, I was expecting a straight forward hack and slash adventure that would sit on my DVD shelf and collect dust and hatred. It turns out that before he was inducted into the Priests, the main character actually had time to have a child, whom he had to sacrifice along with his lover to a life of warfare and servitude. It creates a small amount of sympathy towards the protagonist and builds a more complex plot line, and I think Paul Bettany pulled it off rather well. The other characters however were a whole other story, some lines seemed false even forced, I mean it was obvious acting, I wouldn't have been surprising if they had been reading the script off of cue cards.
Actors aside, lets hit the visuals. I was satisfied with the camera angles and CGI, but there were quite a few slow motion shots that left me wondering why they even bothered wasting the money. Sure slow it down so we can see how he guts the hive guardian, but trying to create emotion with a two second slow motion shot when the daughter and sheriff kiss didn't work. Another criticism, the characters rarely had actual names, the protagonist and antagonist seemed just labels, I mean Priest and Black Hat? Thats not even worth hiring writers for, its like they just used the short forms off the script and ran with it. Also it seemed they stole a little bit of everything with this movie, Black Hat was an exact copy of Jericho cross from Deathwatch, as well as the trains, they even stole the scene when the damsel in distress hides the table knife in her sleeve.
All in all Priest had an interesting back story, tasty action sequences, a palatable score, and one thing I love, a post apocalyptic earth. Although it was hard not to miss the overused slo-mo, questionable acting, and trademark violations. This is at most a buy at least a download, Cory Goodman next time focus on reading not writing. If you enjoyed this for its post apocalyptic setting and bible toting then check out the Book of Eli, if you loved the vampire action then watch the Underworld Series and if you were left completely disappointing than maybe the comics will redeem the franchise.
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