I, Frankenstein

For F*** Magazine

I, FRANKENSTEIN 

Director: Stuart Beattie
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Yvonne Strahovski, Bill Nighy, Socratis Otto, Miranda Otto, Caitlin Stasey, Jai Courtney, Aden Young, Deniz Akdeniz
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi
Run Time: 92 mins
Opens: 23 January 2014
Rating: PG13 (Violence)

So, let’s get this out of the way: yes, he’s “Frankenstein’s Monster”, “Frankenstein” is the name of the scientist who created him. We guess I, Frankenstein’s Monster just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. This take on Mary Shelley’s classic horror tale is based on the Darkstorm Comics title by writer-actor Kevin Grevioux (who also appears in the film as henchman Dekar). Yes, the titular creature in the comics looks a lot more like how he’s traditionally depicted than what they went with for the movie, but rippling abs and barely noticeable scars notwithstanding, this reviewer was pleasantly surprised by the latest onscreen retelling of The Modern Prometheus.

The film starts with an image familiar to those who have read Mary Shelley’s novel: that of a lone figure trudging across the snow carrying a body on his back. The figure is Frankenstein’s Monster (Eckhart) and the body, that of his creator, Victorian scientist Victor Frankenstein (Young). Without a soul but somehow immortal, the creature finds himself caught in the middle of a celestial battle between the demons of hell and “gargoyles”, a contingent of angels who watch over humanity disguised as those stone sculptures. The Gargoyle queen Leonore (Otto) christens the creature “Adam”, and he takes the last name of his creator. It is more than 200 years later and the demon prince Naberius (Nighy) has his sights set on Adam, who is the key to the formation of a hellish army with which Naberius plans to conquer the world. In his human guise of “Charles Wessex”, Naberius has hired electrophysiologist Terra Ward (Strahovski) to conduct re-animation experiments; Terra keen to learn Adam’s secrets but unaware of the treacherous scheme they will be used to enact.



I, Frankenstein is adapted and directed by Stuart Beattie, whose diverse credits as a screenwriter include Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Collateral, 30 Days of Night and Australia. His first film as director was Australian young adult novel adaptation Tomorrow When the War Began (stars Caitlin Stasey and Chris Pang both have minor roles in this movie). I, Frankenstein is billed as being “from the producers of Underworld” and it does share a similar aesthetic and urban fantasy setting. Michelle McGahey’s production design is mesmerizing, the majestic cathedral sanctuary of the gargoyles and the horrific, cavernous demon corpse farm lending the picture a genuine sense of scale and grandeur.

There was every chance that I, Frankenstein would end up looking cheap and sloppily-made and there was no shortage of eyes being rolled upon the unveiling of the first trailer. Guess what: I, Frankenstein looks amazing. The visual effects work, mostly done by Australian houses Iloura and Cutting Edge, are top-notch stuff. The character animation on the angels in their gargoyle form is particularly noteworthy - the personality captured in the facial expressions, the mechanics of the wings and feathers, the mottled, stony texture – it reminded this reviewer of the Hulk in The Avengers. The visual representation of the “descending” of the demons and the “ascension” of the gargoyles (analogous to death) is also quite breathtaking, comprising dances of brilliant light and swirling fire. The Australia-based Makeup Effects Group may not be creatively named, but they sure produced some quality prosthetic makeup effects, particularly on the horned, reptilian natural form of the demons. The 3D conversion is not bad, especially in the flying scenes.



Yes, plopping Frankenstein’s Monster into a centuries-old supernatural feud does seem like an absurd and Hollywood-y jumping off point, but admirably enough, the film commits to the tone. Aaron Eckhart is a serviceable leading man, playing Adam as angsty, misunderstood and brooding, but never insufferably so. He never really got very good parts following the role that should have rocketed him up the A-list, that of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent in The Dark Knight. As mentioned earlier, he never convincingly looks like he was the result of a patchwork of multiple corpses, he just looks like Aaron Eckhart with a tiny bit of effects makeup. Eckhart acquits himself well in the action sequences, having trained in kali stick fighting to wield Adam’s weapons of choice. Also, props to Eckhart for delivering the line “I think your boss is a demon prince” with a totally straight face.

Interestingly, nobody in the supporting cast is terrible. This does seem like the kind of movie which would have some weak links acting-wise. Miranda Otto is stately and ethereal as Leonore, Chuck alum Yvonne Strahovski isn’t the least convincing cinematic “hot scientist” ever, Jai Courtney is gruff and grumpy as usual as her right-hand gargoyle Gideon and Hugo Weaving-esque Socratis Otto (no relation) is sufficiently menacing as hench-demon Zuriel.

Of course, it is Bill Nighy, dab hand at stealing the show, who walks away with hell (and the movie) in a handbasket. He relishes every chance to chew the scenery and seems to enjoy it after being denied the chance to make any kind of impact in Total Recall (2012). He bites into each word with entertaining gusto and dramatically arches his eyebrows the way only he can.

At first, I, Frankenstein looks like your run of the mill dumb, derivative CGI-fest and yes, there are goofy moments, the gargoyle concept is reminiscent of the premise of that 90s Disney cartoon series and it’s far from subtle (the demons in human form are all clad in business suits). But it does a fine job at being what it is, is never boring and manages to be sufficiently engrossing. It’s nowhere near as haphazardly sewn together as its protagonist and far as “oh, this is going to be bad” January releases go, it upends expectations.

Summary: Fire bad, but frankly, movie pretty good.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Last Days on Mars

For F*** Magazine

THE LAST DAYS ON MARS

Director: Ruairi Robinson
Cast:         Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams, Johnny Harris, Goran Kostic, Tom Cullen, Yusra Warsama
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Run Time: 99 mins
Opens: 5 December 2013
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)

Scientists, engineers and other experts managed to pull off the first moon landing in 1969, but in the intervening 44 years, a manned mission to Mars has yet to become a reality. We have however had no shortage of cinematic trips to the red planet, including the "duelling Mars movies" of 2000, Mission to Mars and Red Planet. Lynn Collins played a Martian princess in last year's John Carter and in this film, her X-Men Origins: Wolverine co-star Liev Schreiber gets to walk upon the crimson dust himself.



It is the final day of the Aurora 2's Martian expedition and the crew of astronauts, having grown testy after six months on the planet's surface, are preparing to hand off to the next crew and head home. Kim Aldrich (Williams) in particularly has become increasingly difficult to work with. Suddenly, scientist Marko Petrovic (Kostić) makes an unexpected, earth-shattering discovery: microscopic life on Mars in the form of bacteria. Petrovic falls into a fissure and Captain Charles Brunell (Koteas) and engineer Vincent Campbell (Schreiber) lead a rescue mission that goes south, resulting in the crew members getting infected by the bacteria one by one, creating an "every man for himself" situation. Vincent and Rebecca Lane (Garai) attempt to flee their colleagues-turned vicious foes, stuck upon an alien and inhospitable planet.



Medium-budget science fiction pictures are an interesting genre; the filmmakers behind such movies intending that their product be able to compete with high-gloss Hollywood films at a fraction of the cost. More often than not, audiences are able to spot the cracks. So, it is worth noting that The Last Days on Mars definitely has decent production values, the sets, costumes, visual effects and especially those nifty rover vehicles all quite believable. The film was partially shot on location in Jordan, which doesn't completely pass for Mars; the depiction most moviegoers are used to being redder and harsher than the expanses of desert on display in the film.

Unfortunately, while it looks alright, the film's limp story squanders the potential of its setting. It is very poorly paced and drags in many spots, and although it opens intriguingly enough, there is no element of mystery. What could have been thought-provoking and cleverly ambiguous instead quickly descends into a run of the mill horror flick, with the leads running from space zombies. There's nothing unique to the undead creatures and whenever they tussle with a character, the film kicks into full shaky-cam mode. It also seems that the plot was lifted wholesale from the Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars.



We don't get a lot in the way of characterisation, but Liev Schreiber certainly is a competent leading man and does make a decent astronaut. Schreiber handles the moments in which Vincent is conflicted and turns emotional as well as the action beats. Romola Garai's Rebecca Lane is effectively vulnerable as the female lead but it does seem that both she and Vincent turn into "horror movie survivors" very fast. Elias Koteas is dependable as he usually is and Johnny Harris plays a sufficiently detestable self-centred character, but there's no standout acting moments and the most personal you're going to get is Vincent and Rebecca discussing how much of someone's personality remains after he has been infected with a zombie virus.



While some zombie movies begin with an alien pathogen arriving on earth by way of a meteorite making impact, this cuts out the middleman and has the astronauts infected directly. Even then, it's not a new idea and The Last Days on Mars is disappointing in how dull and conventional it turns out to be.

SUMMARY: Mars is not very interesting to look at, and neither is this ultimately generic sci-fi/horror offering.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

By Jedd Jong

Riddick

For F*** Magazine

RIDDICK

Director: David Twohy
Cast: Vin Diesel, Karl Urban, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Bokeem Woodbine, Dave Bautista, Conrad Pla, Raoul Trujillo, Nolan Funk, Keri Hilson
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi
Run Time: 119 mins

2000’s Pitch Black granted Mark Sinclair, better known as Vin Diesel, his breakout role of Richard B. Riddick. Audiences were very much taken by the tough, shiny-eyed anti-hero. Nine years after the less warmly-received sequel The Chronicles of Riddick, the last Furyan has returned – and what a hearty “welcome back” this one is.

The second film ended with Riddick being crowned Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, but it’s a given that such good fortune wasn’t going to last. Riddick is betrayed by the Necromongers under his command and gets unceremoniously dumped on a wasteland of a planet. Riddick battles the elements and some unfriendly local fauna as two rival mercenary posses arrive to collect the bounty on his head. One is led by the swaggering Santana (Mollà), and the other by Boss Johns (Nable), who has a bone to pick with Riddick after the events of the first film led to a personal tragedy for him. Riddick plots to play both gangs against each other, so he can eventually escape in one of their ships – but the bounty hunters don’t intend on making it easy for him.



Talk of a third Riddick movie has swirled for years, and it must be very gratifying for star-producer Diesel and writer-director Twohy, who also helmed the first two movies, to see this come to fruition. The first film was a fairly original sci-fi suspense thriller and the second attempted to expand the world and was more of a space opera. The Chronicles of Riddick strayed too far from the essence of Pitch Black and also had a PG-13 rating foisted upon it by the studio. It should come as a relief that this one is definitely a lot closer in tone to the first, and might be even more hardcore, armed with an arsenal of blood-letting, swearing and nudity (in that order).



We’ve all heard the griping that sci-fi action flicks just aren’t what they used to be –compare the entertainingly zany balls-out adventure that was Total Recall (1990) with the recent lifeless remake. Riddick harkens back to that era of unneutered blends of sci-fi, action and horror, an effective mix of “protagonist marked for death” and “things that go bump in the night”-type movies. The somewhat bloated scope of the second film is pared down, the entire movie set on that one barren planet, while Twohy manages to make it less repetitive than the first. There are several nice continuity nods, especially with the character of Johns, but this does function well as a stand-alone flick and newcomers shouldn’t be lost. If you’re looking forward to seeing Karl Urban return as Lord Vaako though, bear in mind that his appearance amounts to nothing more than a cameo.



It’s easy to see why Diesel is so attached to this character – dude’s badass to the bone, the fact that his name can be rendered as “Dick B. Riddick” notwithstanding. The first fifteen or so minutes are essentially Man vs. Computer-Enhanced Wild, with the resourceful Riddick in full survivor mode. Diesel and Twohy wisely keep this from descending into a self-aggrandising vanity project. While Riddick still gets the lovingly-framed shots of him walking in slow motion, the cool action bits and enjoyable one-liners, he doesn’t hog the spotlight and we get to spend a good amount of time with the supporting players (more on them in a bit). A suspenseful, well-staged sequence involving an explosive lock showcases the character’s cunning, as does a nicely-edited scene in which he disables the robotic Cyclops sentry.



The two rival bands of hired guns who descend on the planet in search of Riddick do add an interesting dynamic. There’s nothing about these guys we haven’t seen before and some of them are difficult to distinguish from each other, but somehow, that never becomes a problem. Mollà’s Santana, all bravado and posturing and not much else, is amusing to watch – though he does sometimes border on grating. Nable’s Johns is hard-nosed and militant, but there’s just enough character there and he helps tie this film neatly back to the original – though at just three years older than Cole Hauser, he’s too young to play William Johns’ dad. Dave Bautista plays the giant bruiser (when does he not) but he’s certainly not as wooden as other wrestlers-turned-actors who came before him. Katee Sackhoff gets to break out the tough gal schtick she perfected in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and is reasonably kickass.



Battle-hardened mercs bickering can get boring, so Twohy wisely keeps things moving just enough. The swarms of raptors in Pitch Black were fairly memorable beasties, and the venomous critters in this film benefit from the advancements in CGI over the last 13 years. The other species seen inhabiting this planet is more dog-like, and Riddick even grooms one into a pet, in a moment that might be too twee for some. While the production design is solid, there is less spectacle on display than in The Chronicles of Riddick, but this goes with the territory of bringing the franchise back to its roots. There’s a fun hover-bike sequence thrown in for good measure; one does get a kick out of seeing Riddick astride a futuristic hog.



Grim and gritty may be the action movie flavour du jour, but Riddick pulls it off better than others. Vin Diesel might not be regarded as the best actor around, but he’s passionate about the character and clearly enjoys strapping on those goggles. Backed by a small assortment of miscreants, Riddick ends up feeling much more like Pitch Black and might even be an improvement on that.

Summary: Long-time fans of Riddick’s exploits should take a shine to this third go-round that recaptures the tension and atmosphere of the first movie but doesn’t feel like a retread.

RATING: 4 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

World War Z

Written for F*** Magazine, Singapore

WORLD WAR Z

Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, Fana Mokoena
Genre: Action, Horror
Run Time: 116 mins
Opens: 20 June 2013
Rating: PG13 (Violence and Some Intense Sequences)

Hollywood, and by extension the film-going public, has long been fascinated with ways the world could come to an end. A giant meteor, a nuclear winter, a simian uprising – all fair game. In World War Z, it’s a sudden outbreak of a virus that turns perfectly healthy human beings into the rabid walking – no, sprinting dead that does the world in.

Brad Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a former U.N. investigator who has become a stay-at-home dad to his two daughters (Sterling Jerins and Abigail Hargrove). After an ordinary Philadelphia morning unspools into utter chaos, Lane has to get his wife Karen (Enos) and his daughters to safety, and is called upon by his old boss, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Thierry Umutoni (Mokoena). Lane embarks on a globe-trotting mission to track down the origin of the zombie virus outbreak, a mission that takes him to an Air Force base in South Korea, Jerusalem and Cardiff as he must survive the ruthless onslaught of the undead hordes to eventually be reunited with his kin.



The film has been rather infamously plagued by production troubles, going over-budget and over-schedule and requiring an emergency rewrite of its ending during filming. Author Max Brooks, whose book World War Z is the movie’s basis, has said that this is just the novel in name only. Adapting the book was apparently a challenge, seeing as it is presented as a faux-official documentation of the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, consisting of reports filed by a nameless investigator.

This has been re-jigged by screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof (as well as J. Michael Straczynski, whose draft was unused) to focus on a central protagonist, Brad Pitt’s Gerry Lane. Pitt is, as usual, a confident and competent leading man who guides the audience through the mayhem, unwaveringly calm, not quite superhuman, but still possessing incredible luck. The film can be viewed as a road trip picture of sorts, with each new destination introducing new allies and new zombie-related obstacles for Gerry to overcome. For example, in Jerusalem, Gerry meets Segen (Kerstesz), a plucky female Israeli soldier who accompanies him for the next leg of his mission.



Director Marc Forster, known for helming the Bond outing Quantum of Solace, goes for a dusty, lived-in realism, such that this is closer to Contagion than, say, Resident Evil on the sliding scale of viral outbreak movies. It almost feels like a war film, with Gerry akin to the journalist who tags along for the ride into the battlefield. The first half also has shades of War of the Worlds (Spielberg’s 2005 version) with the hero having to protect his loved ones caught in the crossfire.

To Forster’s credit, he’s managed to make the threat feel relatively credible and intense. An early scene in which panicked New Jersey citizens loot a supermarket is well-staged, and scenes of mass hysteria do get across the sense of a major global crisis. The zombies are attracted to noise, so there’s the occasional moment where someone steps on broken glass or drops something, and then everyone freezes for a moment. In such moments, Forster is able to generate sufficient tension. However, he is over-reliant on jump scares – this being a PG-13 horror action film though, that’s pretty much the only way to go in lieu of copious amounts of blood and guts.



Are the zombies scary? They aren’t portrayed with missing limbs or half their entrails hanging out and are closer to feral, diseased human beings than the undead. One scene has a zombie chattering its teeth, which could come off as unintentionally comedic. Still, they seem like a legitimate threat on the whole, even if they come off as a little artificial during the big, computer-enhanced set pieces. The 3D post-conversion is mostly unnecessary and you probably won’t miss much seeing it flat.

Fans of the book may ultimately feel that it has been watered down for the masses, but for what it is and given its troubled production, World War Z is not bad at all. It’s not a particularly fresh take on the “all hell breaks loose” apocalyptic thriller, but on the whole, it doesn’t feel slipshod or hastily patched-together. The ending leaves the door open for a sequel but doesn’t leave the audience completely hanging. It’s a relatively thrilling action-horror film, with Brad Pitt doing a decent amount of globe-trotting and zombie-slaying.

SUMMARY: Director Marc Forster and star/producer Brad Pitt have prevented World War Z  from becoming an utter disaster, managing to scare and thrill with this summer flick.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Chernobyl Diaries

As published in F*** Magazine Singapore, Issue 30

Movie Review                                                                                                  13/6/12

CHERNOBYL DIARIES

2012

Starring: Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Devin Kelley

Directed by: Bradley Parker

            Thank goodness for dumb extreme tourists. Without their extreme stupidity, we practically wouldn’t have any modern horror films. If there’s a safe and/or logical way to get things done, expect them to do the exact opposite in the name of our entertainment, and expect them to bring along a cheap video camera to record all the happy memories.

            That’s the misleading bit though – with “Diaries” in the title, a cast of relative unknowns and Oren Peli of Paranormal Activity fame co-writing and co-producing, you’d think this was the latest in a string of mediocre “found footage” horror movies. Mediocre, yes, found footage, no. The premise seems tailor-made for the subgenre, but perhaps in an attempt to be “original”, the end product is pseudo-found-footage: almost all the shots are hand-held, but not by any of the characters.

            “Characters” is a term used lightly: here we have the whiny Chris (McCartney), his girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley), their friend Amanda (Devin Kelley) and Chris’s brother Paul (Sadowski), whom the three have come to Kiev to visit. Paul springs on them the proposition of taking a tour into the abandoned town of Pripyat, formerly home to the staff of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their families. A backpacking couple (Ingrid Bolso Berdal and Nathan Phillips) tag along; the six led by gruff tour guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko). They are denied entry into the ghost town by the Ukrainian military, and find their way in through a back passage. Then horrible things happen.

            This has all the hallmarks of a cheaply-made, C-grade horror flick: there are more cheap shocks than a defibrillator factory, trite arguments pass for character development, you’ll impatiently count the minutes until someone dies, and a first-time director and former visual effects artist is at the helm. Perhaps this might work as a student film, were it about 15 minutes long. Like most monster-centric horror films, the Jaws-style “what you can’t see is the scariest thing” ethos is invoked, but ultimately ineffective – it goes without saying that Bradley Parker is no Spielberg.

           

            The acting is pretty bad, but the screenplay is as much at fault as the actors are. Our hapless extreme tourists aren’t given very much material to work with, and earlier scenes with them joking about feel like a particularly painful improv session at an acting school. There is nothing special about the creature design at all, and you barely get a good glimpse at any of the attackers even at the end. It’s hard to imagine this movie going up against something like Prometheus at the box office, given that movie’s superior scares and much more interesting monsters.

            Of course, Chernobyl Diaries was made for a fraction of the cost, and the saving grace is that location filming in Hungary and Serbia does provide the movie with a convincingly eerie, desolate setting. If only the filmmakers knew what to do with it. The ending is extremely unsatisfactory, especially after audiences have been stringed along for a while, and it is worth noting that the group never even sets foot in the actual Chernobyl power plant, only hanging around the neighbouring town.

            Several charitable organisations and activist groups were up in arms over the insensitivity of the premise towards the victims of the disaster and their families. It’s hard to argue that the tragedy is a juicy starting point for a horror film, but these organisations should be amply relieved that this movie is barely competent and unlikely to make anything of an impression on viewers. The only thing slightly amusing to this reviewer was the cockroach in the cinema aisle – to think these guys would be all that’s left after a nuclear apocalypse.

SUMMARY: Chernobyl Diaries is dire, less half-baked and more like the microwaved (and irradiated) leftovers of a better horror movie.

RATING: 1.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong  

The Raven

For F*** Magazine

Movie Review                                                                                                                   16/4/12

THE RAVEN

(2012 Release)

Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve

Directed by: James McTeigue

            In National Treasure, America’s founding fathers were the guardians of a secret treasure stash. In the Men In Black films, Elvis, Steven Spielberg and Sylvester Stallone (who is coincidentally planning his own Poe biopic) are aliens. The Brothers Grimm fought mythical monsters. Here, Edgar Allan Poe is roped in by Baltimore’s finest to solve a series of murders based on his stories. This may not seem as impressive, but taking into account the legendary author’s dark imagination and famously macabre stories, the crimes are pretty gruesome. This is the guy credited with the creation of the modern horror and detective stories, after all.

            There is tremendous potential in the idea of Poe pitted against a killer who takes direct inspiration from his tales. Unfortunately, most of it is squandered in favour of unsophisticated slasher movie fare. “People love blood and murder”, Reynolds (Kevin R McNally) the newspaper editor tells Poe. And in that respect, the movie delivers – the most gruesome murder happens relatively early on in the movie, where the victim is cut in half by a lowering bladed pendulum, something out of a Saw film – though Poe did it first in The Pit and the Pendulum.

Problem is, more people are likely to have a Saw film than read Poe’s story.

            John Cusack’s Poe is quite a disappointment. He’s portrayed as the typical eccentric artist, and there’s no mystique or danger, especially given the enigma the real Poe was. Cusack also doesn’t fit into the period surroundings at all; one would half expect him to lift a ghetto blaster over his head. At its worst, it brings to mind Nicolas Cage – not a good thing.

            Inspector Fields, as played by Luke Evans, is earnest, hardworking, dedicated – and absolutely one-note and boring. The interesting dynamic that might have existed between the author and the policeman is all but absent. The inclusion of Alice Eve as Emily Hamilton, a love interest for Poe, is done rather lazily, considering that he had a wife but was famously asexual and apparently only loved her platonically. But that would have been too difficult to portray and would have gotten in the way of the pulpy thrills now, wouldn’t it? And so, she’s quickly put in jeopardy as a motivator for Poe, and to force Poe and her disapproving father (Brendan Gleeson) to work together.   

            When the identity of the killer is revealed, it is more likely to induce an indifferent “meh” as opposed to the desired “gasp!” And that’s the cardinal sin when it comes to whodunits. Director James McTeigue also delights in heavy-handed faux-symbolism – just because the title of the movie is “The Raven” doesn’t mean one or more of the birds have to flutter into frame in every other scene. However, the art direction and the re-creation of 19^th Century Baltimore are generally pretty good.

So, this is pretty much average Poe.

PS: I take offense to the newspaper editor dismissing criticism (i.e. reviews) as “the easy stuff”.

SUMMARY: I’m no Poe, so the best I can come with is “you won’t be ravin’ about The Raven”. Hey, give me points for trying.

RATING: 2/5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Priest

PRIEST

2011 Release

Starring: Paul Bettany, Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q, Karl Urban

Directed by: Scott Stewart

            Paul Bettany seems to have a thing for tough, butt-kicking religious types: he played an assassin monk in The Da Vinci Code, an uzi-wielding archangel in Legion (also by director Scott Stewart), and in this Korean comic book-based film is the titular warrior priest, a specially-ordained vampire fighter. When his niece Lucy (Lily Collins) is kidnapped by vampires, the Priest (Bettany), rendered redundant after the human-vampire wars, goes back into action to rescue her, assisted by small town lawman Hicks (Gigandet), and his former colleague the Priestess (Q), facing off against the villainous human-vampire hybrid Black Hat (Urban).

            The main problem with this movie is that it brings nothing new to the table. Warrior priests aren’t new, vampire wars aren’t new and totalitarian religious regimes aren’t new either. In fact, the whole movie can be turned into a game of “spot-where-this-came-from!” Elements are liberally borrowed from such movies as the Underworld films, the Mad Max films, Blade Runner, Equilibrium, V for Vendetta and so on. Black Hat’s getup is straight out of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and even the monstrous hive guardian brings to mind the rancor beast from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

            The film is droll, joyless and takes itself far too seriously. Movies like this are meant to be escapism, and the 3D adds very little to the uninspired mix. The characters are mostly one-note and the cast doesn’t have to do very much. In addition to the cross tattooed on his forehead, all Bettany needs to carry him through the movie is a scowl. However, Karl Urban seems to be having fun, chewing the scenery as the big bad, but even he is underused. Also, what on earth is veteran actor and Oscar-nominee Christopher Plummer doing here?

            Sorely lacking in imagination, energy and about as soulless as the vampires in it, Priest is far from a fun night out at the theatre. However, it does have decent visual effects and a stylish animated prologue going for it. But in the end, maybe paying your own priest at church a visit is more worthwhile– he’s probably more fun.

SUMMARY: Bringing nothing new to the table, Priest is a lifeless, paint-by-numbers post-apocalyptic thriller. Get your warrior priest/vampire war fix elsewhere.

RATING: 2/5 STARS