Priest (2011– 87 mins) P. Bettany, K. Urban, Maggie Q

Priest is a post-apocalyptic super-heroish movie based on a comic book. For ages there has been a war between man and vampires. The war was won by man only with the help of super hero-like skilled warriors of the church… the “Priests”. Since the victory, the race of man has been living in walled off cities under the rule of the church. They use strict discipline of the church and fear in the people to rule. The heads of the church feel there is no need to keep the priests around keeping the peace so they basically have disbanded the order and will not indulge any claims of vampire sightings in the wastelands.

The vampires since the war have been kept in “reservations” to themselves where they supposedly have kept to themselves not challenging the cities or settlements of man. That is until “Priest” (that’s all we know Bettany’s character’s name as) gets word that his brother and sister in law have been killed and his niece has been captured by the vampires. He wants to investigate the attack but the church will not acknowledge that it could happen under their watch so they tell him “no”. Therefore, he must break out of the city as an outlaw and go out on his own to rescue his niece. He ends up getting a couple of companions on his quest one of which is his niece’s fiance, a gun-slinging sheriff from the wastelands.

It’s a pretty good action/hero/monster movie in the vein of the “Underworld” series of movies. It’s not too serious, it doesn’t waste time with too many blah details in the beginning, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Bettany actually plays a pretty good bad-ass and also has some good lines (although not too many of them period).  All things I like in action hero movies. However, some of these things can actually work against you. I will say again I liked this movie but here are a few things that really bugged me. First the movie falls short of GeekJock’s cardinal rule of motion pictures. It’s less then 90 mins. And that is one HUGE pet peeve of mine. If you expect people to go watch your film in the theater and/or buy it on DVD/blu-ray you should provide ample entertainment. and that “ample” means a film of at least 90 mins in duration! The second thing is being a bit short we feel a little short changed on the whole story. Sure they do a great job with the animation in the beginning telling the back story but we could have used a bit more of the now story as well. We get a man on a mission a couple of fights and BOOM game over. It has that feeling of them running out of resources so they just stopped filming and went with what they had. Give us more story at the reservation, give us more kick assery of the priests as a group. Sorry I just feel cheated out of what could have been a good action/horror epic.Even the dialog, while good (when it was present) was just lacking in quantity. I think Priest himself has 10 lines the whole movie.

Again, all that complaining not withstanding, the movie actually is entertaining and a good watch. And being so damn short it might even be one your significant other won’t mind sitting through.

Verdict–> A decent rental and worth the buck to get it. I didn’t see it in blu-ray format but I gotta think it looks amazing in it tho. A good recommendation by me, and nearly perfect for a double feature with your significant other/date. Pair it up with a rom-com or drama since it’s short you can prolly watch any length of a first movie before finishing with this quicky!

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