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After a quick introductory segment featuring a western-looking family on a desert farm being overrun by something ominous, we get images of a dark future cityscape that feels heavily inspired by Blade Runner. Syd Mead gets a lot of credit for production design on that film, but the actual look and feel of the city was largely drawn-up by director Ridley Scott with inspiration drawn by comic book artist Moebius. It’s interesting seeing Moebius’ brilliant art ricochet into a film inspired by a comic book work far less inspired than most of Moebius’ stuff.

In this particular dark future, the priests who had been trained to fight vampires had been disbanded by the theocratic government in charge of the vast walled cities for fear that as a group they would wield too much power. Paul Bettany plays the film’s central priest. He is contacted by a representative from the town that was evidently attacked by vampires in the opening post-animated segment of the film. He’s going back to the town to try to reclaim it.

Bettany’s priest contacts the theocracy’s monsignors to get reinstated as a vampire killer so he can go out and defend the town. They inform him that they haven’t had any reports of any escapes from the vampire reservations. His request for reinstatement is denied. Even though the act of going against the theocratic church’s will is said to be going against God itself, Bettany’s priest elects to go beyond the walls to protect the people of the city anyway, mounting a wicked-looking cycle to journey out into the wasteland. Between this and a few other moments in the film, including some particularly nice shots of the walled fortress city, the film does capture some of the spirit of Min-Woo Hyung’s vast backdrop beyond the story.

The old west feel of the comic book original is paralleled in the film by the culture in the wasteland, which evidently has adopted an old west design for no readily apparent reason - kind of a silly and gratuitous appropriation from the comic book.

Bettany’s priest is joined by a lawman who wants to aid in the assault on the undead. The head clergy at the town are sent out to take in the rogue Bettany, who has gone against their orders. This begins a classic western-style action adventure storyline that is older than commercial fiction — an adventure story style that predates TV, film, radio and pulp magazines. It’s pretty solidly delivered here, but Stewart does little to add to the genre. There’s very little here that hasn’t already been seen a million times before in just about every form of medium from pulp fiction and radio serials to modern computer games.

Surprisingly, the fact that the story lacks originality isn’t quite enough to keep it from being entertaining. This type of story has longevity because it works no matter how many times it’s done as long as it’s done competently. Stewart’s film excels at being competent at telling a solid action fantasy adventure story.

The Verdict

While there are numerous parallels between the Min-Woo Hyung comic book and the film penned by Cory Goodman, the parallels make for more of a distant connection between the two. The comic book seems to have aspired for a story of greater depth and complexity than the film and failed pretty consistently to deliver on that aspiration. By contrast, the film seeks a much purer appropriation of a time-honored adventure story and meets with solid success in doing so.

Interestingly enough, the film comes out in a summer positively cluttered with classic adventure films. As a result, even though the film was better at achieving its desired effect, it probably won’t be remembered as well as the comic book in the long run. One week after Priest opens on 2,800 screens across the US, the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film opens on 4,000 screens. With a cool early reception from film critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Priest may only break even on production budget. The comic book series will likely remain in print for quite some time...

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