Priest

This epic sci-fi B-movie immersed me in an enthusiastically depicted imaginary world thanks to its nice set designs, skillfully captured costumes dramatically billowing in the wind and motorbikes speeding through dry deserts, and with its omnipresent dark, gothic atmosphere. Priest is more comic-book-like than your usual comic-book adaptation. I don’t really mind that it combines the worlds of Blade Runner and Mad Max, adding some ostensibly Matrix-like action, because you can feel the director’s enthusiasm and unhidden admiration for those classics. The story is properly direct and fast-paced, sometimes with lapses in logic and, conversely, sometimes paying attention to the consistency in details that big-budget blockbusters usually don’t bother with. The priest characters played by Paul Bettany and Maggie Q are good, as is the chemistry between them. Christopher Young’s music is excellent, lending the film a lot of drive. If all this sounds like too much praise, it’s because I got much more than I expected based on the unfavorable reviews. (15.09.2011)

Scott Charles Stewart didn’t learn anything from Legion and delivers another piece of incredible bullshit with a serious face. This film is 100% immune to being taken seriously. It’s clear that the director wanted to make something cool and badass, but failed spectacularly. It’s so easy to ridicule that it doesn’t even bring any pleasure, its stupidity is just annoying. There’s one cliché after the other, it lacks all logic, and the script doesn’t have any surprises (the silly shocking twist at the end will be clear to anyone who has ever watched at least a couple of films or one soap opera). It pissed me off even more than Legion because I paid 109 CZK for Priest ticket and got wet on the way back home. (13.05.2011)

I can follow up on the end of my comment for Legion, where I said that the director should throw away the Bible and the special effects software because he’s not very good at either. Priest just adds to that because I haven't seen such misery, which layers desperately unimaginative action scenes (the most annoying series of slow-motion sequences of the year!) into a horribly illogical and uninteresting whole, since... well, since Legion. I feel a bit sorry for Paul Bettany, who goes all in, this time joined by Karl Urban. Yet the rest of the film simply ruins things, which beats even the last drop of the audience’s effort to watch it as a completely dumbed-down post-apocalyptic B-movie with vampires. Pushing such "shit" in theatres in 3D is bold - asking for admission is audacious. (11.06.2011)

Bland and flavorless, no suspense, cliché upon cliché that you can't even digest properly because the movie just won't let you, Cam Gigandet can't act, and the ending is a waste. The music didn't impress either. And I kinda regret the money I paid for it. The action was slow, and it wasn’t really any good. The vampires weren't that great, either. It's just a very, very weak film. Somehow, after sleeping it off, I can't even remember what (if anything) I enjoyed about it... (14.05.2011)

Better than Legion, but not by much. Technically, I had no reservations (except for the bungled fight with the hive guard), I liked the individual scenes and ideas, but together it didn't work. I was probably most annoyed by the pitifully small amount of space given to Karel Urban, whose villain would certainly have deserved a bigger exhibition. The whole thing (except for the music and visuals) looks like a classic B-movie, but I doubt the filmmakers wanted to make something like this. Two and a half stars. (07.06.2011)