‘Priest’ Review 2011 || 'Priest 3D' Review || Movie Review: Priest Somehow Makes Vampires From the Future Super Boring!!!!!!!!!!!!

Screen Rant’s Ben Kendrick reviews Priest 3D

Priest, the 2011 film that reteams director Scott Stewart with Paul Bettany (the pair directed and starred in Legion, respectively), is an adaptation of the Korean comic series of the same name by Hyung Min-woo. However, the Priest of Korean print tells a very different story than that of its Hollywood movie counterpart. Instead of battling fallen angels, the American Priest fights beastly vampires – who sleep in coffins and keep humans as pets.
That said, plenty of comic book-turned-movie adaptations have benefited from creative liberties here and there.

The Vampires of Priest 3D

As mentioned, the film never really takes advantage of anything more than the most basic settings and story beats – never really touching on the vampire strata (i.e., that there’s more than one kind), the day-to-day lives of the surviving humans, or what could be an interesting juxtaposition in the character of Priest (a man of faith who enjoys killing). Instead, the film focuses on the cliché story of a “true” man of faith who must do God’s work – in spite of a vacuous and incompetent church organization. Even though the basic plot isn’t particularly fresh, Priest still had room to capitalize on its less-conventional aspects, given the film’s dystopian Western setting and intriguing mix of modern/traditional vampire tropes. Unfortunately, the movie is too one-note to take advantage of anything but a linear race to the final Priest-on-vampire battle.
While the phrase “Priest-on-vampire battle” might sound epic and exciting, the film manages to underwhelm even in the one area that many action fans were looking forward to –the action. Sadly, there are really only about three action set-pieces in the film and the first one is (by far) the best; after that strong start, the film never manages to regain momentum. Despite a couple of isolated fight sequences during the climax, the whole thing mostly goes out in a non-sensical whimper (especially if you’re Cam Gigandet’s character, Hicks).
While it might sound like brow-beating, the problems with the story and action sequences are largely predicated on the film’s ability to make even a character as (theoretically) badass and (potentially) interesting as Priest into a complete bore. Similarly, Karl Urban’s “Black Hat” is kept in the shadows so long that, by the time he’s fully revealed, it has already become clear that there’s very little substance to the character – or his backstory. Gigandet (best known as James from Twilight) plays a Western Lawman (the aforementioned Hicks) who provides a few entertaining moments, but mostly serves as a foil for Priest, and an excuse for Bettany to deliver heavy exposition about the in-and-outs of vampire hunting.

Paul Bettany in Priest 3D

Even the more successful character moments are undermined by some of the most clichéd and heavy-handed dialogue in recent memory. Priest just mutters generalities under his breath; Black Hat spouts the Greatest Hits of essential villainous platitudes --  “You’ve done well” and “I’m counting on it”; Maggie Q (who plays her usual contemplative female warrior role) has the only heartfelt and (almost) charismatic dialogue in the film. Sadly though, the lack of execution with the rest of the project makes even the moments between Priest and Q’s Priestess come across as overly-melodramatic.
Similar to the film’s twist (which has very little bearing on the emotional complexity of the story), the 3D in Priest is entirely unnecessary and is one of the more egregious attempts at selling audiences on a mess of a film by slapping post-converted 3D on it. The 3D itself doesn’t fail as bad as the infamous Clash of the Titans post-conversion but it’s still entirely unnecessary and only succeeds in not making the film any worse than it would be – except for the higher ticket price.
Inevitably, some action fans will read this review and say something along the lines of, “It’s just an action movie – it doesn’t need character development or competent dialogue.” and I somewhat agree. In some cases, it’s fair to overlook whether a movie is technically good, in favor of it being immensely entertaining (Fast Five is a good example). However, Priest is an especially lousy action movie with very little compelling action, boring characters, and a convoluted plot, all put together by a group of filmmakers who failed entirely at capitalizing on the more compelling aspects of the core concept. And given that they had an extra year to get the film into theaters (it was originally set for an August 27th 2010 release), it’s only more disappointing that most that was done to try to salvage the wreckage was tempting audiences with a post-conversion 3D gimmick.

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