Movie Review: Priest



Priest

Starring:
Paul Bettany (Legion, The Tourist, The Da Vinci Code)

Cam Gigandet (Twilight, Never Back Down, The OC)

Maggie Q (Nikita, Live Free or Die Hard)

Karl Urban (Star Trek, Red, Lord of the Rings)

Stephen Moyer (True Blood, The Starter Wife)

Director: Scott Stewart

Run time: 87 minutes (1 hour, 27 minutes)

Rating:  PG-13 (intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images, and brief strong language)

Release Date:  May 13, 2011

Distributors: Screen Gems and Sony Pictures

Synopsis (from moviefone.com):

In a world ravaged by wars between humans and vampires, a renegade priest fights to rescue his niece from the legions of bloodsuckers who seek to transform the young girl into one of them. A battle-weary veteran of the last vampire war, warrior Priest (Paul Bettany) now resides in a heavily fortified city where the ruling Church is a greater menace than any creature of the night. When a pack of vampires abduct Priest's niece (Lily Collins), the vengeful holy man breaks his vows and promises to save the young innocent from a fate worse than death. He can't do it alone, but with a powerful warrior Priestess (Maggie Q) and his niece's boyfriend, a sharp-shooting sheriff (Cam Gigandet), on his side, Priest may have a fighting chance. Stephen Moyer, Karl Urban, and Brad Dourif co-star.

 

Our thoughts:

First off, JoAnna and I saw this back in November as part of a screen test. We had to sign a confidentiality agreement and we are glad to FINALLY be able to talk about the movie and drag our friends to it.

I wanted to see this when I first heard about it is because I love Cam Gigandet. After seeing the first trailer, I was still just as excited as when I read the synopsis, if not more so. The movie did not disappoint. The entire cast was wonderful and were great together. The set was also visually wonderful.

The opening title sequence was unique because it is a comic book-esque style, which gives the background of the priests. I thought this was great because I did not know that it was a graphic novel, so adding that to the opening was a nice touch.

With a lot of movies and television shows these days having cute, sexy vampires, the vampires in this movie are far from sexy. They are ugly and grotesque. But that works with the darkness of the movie. It helps to show that the vampires are something to fear, even though the Church swears that all the vampires have been killed.

The ending shown in theatres is different than the ending we saw back in November, but I like this new ending a little bit more, even though it doesn't show Cam like the other one. We also noticed that they added a small scene, unless we over looked it in Novemeber. But the parts we really loved remained in the film.

JoAnna got to see it in 3D and said that they don't have things popping out at you. Instead, the background has more depth to kind of make you feel like you are in the movie.

We highly recommend seeing this. Beware, there are moments that may make you jump. The girl sitting to my left also spent quite a bit of the movie with her eyes covered. So if you get scared easily, you may want to wait until you can watch it from the safety of your home.