Tiffany Logue
Staff writer
“Priest,” directed by Scott Charles Stewart (director of “Legion”), was a different film involving vampire hunting. By this statement I mean “Priest”’s story-line is one that is not the overused plot of a vampire love story or a way to show the screenwriter’s new idea for vampires as in “Twilight.”
Its basic story-line started when Priest, the main character who played by Paul Bettany (“A Knight’s Tale,” “Wimbledon,” “Legion”), heard of his niece being kidnapped by vampires. Being an ex-vampire hunter, Priest asks the Monsignors for permission to leave the safe city he helped create to rescue his niece.
Even though the permission to leave is denied, Priest went into the wasteland, where his family members live, to rescue Lucy who is played by Lily Collins (“The Blind Side”). The wasteland is what was left of the world after the priests killed all of the vampires.
In the wasteland, Priest teams up with Hicks, the sheriff of the local town, to hunt the vampires. The local sheriff is played by Cam Gigandet.
After Priest disobeys the town’s monsignors, they then send other remaining priests to bring Priest back. In this search party is a priestess, played by Maggie Q (“Live Free or Die Hard,” “Mission Impossible III”). Maggie Q sets off on her own to hunt down Priest with the strict orders to bring Priest back “dead or alive.”
With only 87 minutes of playing time, “Priest” is shorter than the movies viewers have grown accustomed to seeing. However, in those 87 minutes, viewers will most likely find something that helps them enjoy the film such as two actors, who are both entertaining and have become more well-known, and their hidden secrets that could shock viewers.
“Priest” contains romance, action, drama and tragedy. Action and tragedy help the movie start off with a quick and catchy introduction. The tragedy gave Priest the reason to go while the action is how the tragedy occurred. Both were needed to set the plot in motion.
However, I did find two things to complain about involving the film. The aspects I did not think were necessary were the cartoonish story at the beginning of the film and the vampires’ appearances.
The opening of “Priest” gave its viewers a lot of needed information involving the history of the priests and the vampires. However, the way the movie gave those viewers that information was a bit ridiculous.
The way chosen to give the important background information was to use cartoons. I do realize using cartoons probably helped the rating of the movie stay PG- 13 instead of R, but I thought the cartoon aspect was too childish for today’s technological abilities. The cartoons used could have easily been designed by an amateur. The idea for the cartoon was a good one. But there are cartoons have designed better.
The second aspect was the vampires. The vampires were not logically designed. One chased Hicks, the sheriff, but had no logical way to follow him because the vampires did not have eyes or ears. In another instance, the guardian vampire chased Hicks into a hole in the vampire’s nest, then started chasing Priest by jumping in the air over him. Without eyes or ears, how do they know where their victims are?
I overheard viewers also debate if the vampires had noses as I left the theater. If the vampires did not have three out of five of the essential senses, the guardian vampire that I mentioned could not have been able to know Hicks was there, let alone chase him.
Of course the problems mentioned are minor considering that I believe “Priest” was worth the time I spent to watch it. The film gave a different kind of perspective on how vampires started instead of showing different abilities, allergies or habits of vampires that authors and screenwriters have come up with today.