I, thankfully, didn't pay for the 3D showing. I'm going to take that money I saved and tithe to Jesus. He would have wanted it that way. I was actually looking forward to seeing this film. It stars the dude from that other movie, "Legion", which is about angels ironically, Paul Bettany. This is an excerpt from wikipedia.com:
"Priest is a 2011 American supernatural action film starring Paul Bettany as the title character. The film, directed by Scott Stewart, is based on the Korean comic of the same name. In an alternate world, humanity and vampires have warred for centuries.
After the last Vampire War, the veteran warrior Priest (Bettany) lives in obscurity with other humans inside one of the Church's walled cities. When the Priest's niece (Lily Collins) is kidnapped by vampires, the Priest breaks his vows to hunt them down. He is accompanied by the niece's boyfriend, Hicks (Cam Gigandet), who is a wasteland sheriff, and the warrior Priestess (Maggie Q)"
See! Doesn't that sound cool? Vampires, wastelands,...Korean! Sounds like some Vash- the-stampied-Trigun shit. Sadly, it's not. It didn't help that it started with a cartoon prologue to explain how the Priest came to be. It looked like a graphic cartoon colab by Todd MacFarlane and Chuck Jones. So, after that we see a Priest, who's name is...Priest. And he's not even Korean. Him and his commorades with the same powers are attacking the vampire's nest or hive or whatever (because coffins are so retro). The assult turns out to be a trap (because the vamps are smart at times?) and Priest's team barely survives. A few don't make it out the hive alive, specifically one. The dude from Xena, Warrior Princess: Karl Urban. He played Cupid and wore a diaper on the tv series and is nameless for the first half of this film. So, we'll just call him Cupid.
Just as Priest makes it out, Cupid is caught and snatched back into the hive by the vampires. Just then Priest wakes up in a sweat revealing that he was dreaming of the past.
Priest lives in this Judge-Dredd-Total-Recall-Blade-Runner-ish city where the church pretty much runs everyones lives using the fear of vampires and the churches ability to protect them to stay in power. Priest is an ex-hunter for the church . These hunters were trained specifically to fight vampires. But, fearing their power, the hunters were disbanded and that's why we see him living in a raggity Fifth Element apartment still receiving unemployment checks.
So, transition from the inside of this gated church city to the wastelands where this farming family is attacked by a ...uh..pride of vampires? Pack? ....I don't know...flock? There were a lot of them. Anyway, during the attack, a dark ominous figure kidnaps the daughter of the family. So, obviously there will be plot development on that. The sheriff of the wastelands, named Hicks, goes to the city to find Priest to help him get the girl back. See, the sheriff is the boyfriend of the daughter that was kidnapped and Priest..is her uncle. See, plot developement. (^_^)b. Anyway, so they go to the wasteland cities to get clues on the vamp attacks. One place is where people alow themselves to be bittin by vamps and changed into vampiric humans in exchange for being vampire slaves. So, they beat them up and all that and find out that the vamps are congregating in another town. Like showing up to save princess toadstool and arriving to find that she is in ANOTHER castle. .
Sidenote: Did anyone else find it ironic that the dude playing Priest's brother was the dude from True Blood, a show about vampires? Oh well, he died... . .
Anyway, somehow the Priestess shows up. I don't care to remember how. She joins the battle team like a final fantasy character and they go to the next city where they get intel that the vamps and the dark ominous man has a train. On the trip we see that there is a love interest between Priest and Priestess. She tries to kindle a flame but he turns her down for his commitment to the cloth or something? Anyway, they go to the next town only to find some other priest that was sent by the church to get them are dead. They deduce that the vamps plans are to attack the fortress church city with the train and that all the prior attacks were to draw the priest out to the wastelands so they'd be too far from the city to protect it. The gang intercepts the train to attack the vamps and the dark ominous figure that captured his niece which Priest finds out is Cupid! Appearently, he did not die in the hive attack all those years ago. Actually, he reveals that the vampire queen spared him and gave him her blood making him into a vamp/hunter hybrid. So, Aaliah, Queen of the Dammed, just felt like being generous that day?
So, Priest and Cupid fight. Meanwhile, priestess goes ahead and puts a bomb on the track to blow up when it hits. Cupid, in their fight, tells Priest that he isn't the daughter's uncle but ( in Maury Povich voice) "you ARE the father." See, Priest wasn't always a priest. He was once married to his brother's wife and got down with the boogie. But, when he was drafted for priest hood, his brother took over after the conception and raised his daughter for Priest as his own. Ooooohh SNaP! More fighting. Just then, the train hits the bomb on the track and preist and his daughter jump off the moving train.. yes moving... .. and Cupid gets blown to bits. In the after math, Priest goes to the church delagates and shows them proof that the vampires are re-emerging for war and that they need to get ready and some other crap that suggest a sequel.
Ok. So, here's what's wrong. First, let's never open the movie with a cartoon ever again. Looked like an R rated version of Lord of the Rings narrorated for Reading Rainbow, ....but don't take my word for it. Do Doop DOOP. Second, anything cool written by Koreans or Japanese-es or anything asian is usually cooler live action when they do it. Next, there was this part in the film where they were fightng the familiars (Hicks first encounter with the vampires) and there was no sfx. I don't know if the theatre was at fault or just bad editing but I swear I saw Preist punch a guy and no sound came from it. Movie mistake. A noticable one. Then, when the train blew up, everyone survived but Cupid. This super human dude given vamp powers from the QUEEN vampire which should make him stronger and faster than Priest now loses? And not from the actual fighting but because he couldn't jump off a train? Priest jumped off the train and lived. Priest's daughter, a mere human, lived jumping off the train...without a scratch. But the super human, vampire hybrid underworld two hybrid xena warrior princess dude couldn't jump off the train? Even after the explosion, HIS HAT survived. But that's not what got me most. After all that, the movie ends with the sugestion of a sequal. Why can't action movies today just end? Why can't I watch a story then be done with it in one sitting. "Wanted" was so cool but it ended. Priest was not that good to consider continuation. They should have strenghthened this movie better and focused more on Cupid and Priest's quarrel. Even Judge Dredd with its wackyness had a good mix of action with closure. But I shouldn't even try to mix church and state.
