So let me ask you something. Did anyone else know that Priest was actually based on a Korean comic? This is a true fact. It’s just a shame that even though it is based on the comic, it almost completely ignores it. I actually read up on the comic before writing this review and found myself awfully surprised to have absolutely nothing to compare the movie to. This just goes along with my overall problems with films based on comics that ignore the story but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. I’m here to talk about the movie, so let’s get to reviewing Priest.
The Negative
If Star Wars, Blade Runner, Mad Max, and Van Helsing had a love child with the Western Film Genre it would result in Priest. While that may sound good on paper, it ends up as a big mess on the big screen. The plot was uninspired and predictable. At its most basic the story is ninja priests vs. cowboy vampires, once again this sounds really cool on paper but would you really want to watch a whole film about this and not just a cool fight scene (which are surprisingly rare). The film is barely held together by the plot. After awhile of watching the film I started listing off plot twists from Star Wars and watched as they slowly appeared. Some of the more interesting plot twists and character motivations are barely touched on and result in a very bizarre film.
One of my major problems with the film is the sheriff Hicks. Not once in the entire film do I actually feel like he is competent at all. I’m fairly certain he only shoots 5 vampires in the entire film, if that. At one point in the film, Hicks threatens the Priest that if his kidnapped girlfriend has been converted into a vampire he will kill Priest in order to stop him from slaying her. I found this to be the funniest moment in the entire movie. Nothing leading up to that point had actually made me believe that this guy could even shoot an elephant standing in front of him, so to have his character defiantly state that he would kill the Priest to save his girlfriend came off as childish and impudent.
My final problem in the film was the concept of highly trained ninja assassins. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea but I found it oddly portrayed in the film. Our main Priest is very poorly armed only carrying on him a knife and cross shurikens. When planning on going after someone kidnapped by a vampire hoard, I would have brought a lot more weapons with me. You could argue that he doesn’t need any more weaponry, but then I see the scene where he fights the large vampire monster in the hive and I feel like a larger blade would have done the trick. Then there are 3 of the Priest that are killed really easily by the main villain. One of the Priests was simply showing off his amazing choreography before having a hole punched in his chest. For being highly trained assassin’s they went down a bit too easy.
The Positive
The best thing going for this film was its visuals. The city, the desert, the weapons, the motorcycles; everything in this film had a visual stylization to it that looked amazing. I would re-watch the movie just to enjoy the atmosphere and background of the world these characters walked in. I feel like the beautiful visuals were wasted on such a poor plot.
I actually found myself really liking the villains of the movie. The vampires themselves came off as being similar to the alien Bugs species from Starship Troopers, in that it was a swarm of mindless killers being lead by one silent brain whose overall goal is left a mystery to us. Karl Urban as Black Hat was an interesting villain whose overall plot and motivation should have been a centerpiece to the film. Black Hat was a former Priest who was captured by the vampire swarm and converted into one of them. His relationships with the other Priests are barely touched on and I feel like we missed out on something important.
In Conclusion
I had a really hard time writing this review and have been putting it off for quite some time. The reason for this is that the film was just not that memorable. I found myself hard pressed to be inspired enough to write about this uninspired film. The fact that a movie where Ninja Priests fight Cowboy Vampires should tell how desperate film studios are these days to try and get our money. 2 out of 5.
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