The Pope’s Exorcist

The secret to genre fiction is delivering unique characters.

The Pope’s Exorcist has three credited writers and some flashy direction from Julius Avery.  

It’s not scary but the key here is how much fun we all have hanging out with Russell Crowe’s Father Gabriel Amorth. 

Do I want to watch a random mystery movie? Eh maybe. Do I want to watch Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc solve another mystery? You bet!

The movie immediately gives you a quick pop exorcism, then shows Father Amorth railing for eternal justice against a group of no nothing Catholic bureaucrats and finally sends him on his big mission. 

If this doesn’t exactly sound like horror to you (the bureaucrat scene is a direct descendent of 50 years of cop movies) that is very much by design. 

The special effects and humor are post Marvel, the light comedy has some zing, and the director says he was going for Indiana Jones. 

I gotta comment on the Marvel thing for a second. If the folks at Marvel decided they wanted to make exorcism movies this is really, really close to what they would make.

Down to the end of the movie setting up a franchise. It was so Marvel I waited a few minutes through the end credits on the off chance there would be a special scene.

Avery’s other big influence feels like a comic book artist and writer Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy.

The way it looks, the symbolism in the architecture and the feel of it as a little scary but it’s ok cause there is a superhuman good guy or in this case an almost superhuman priest fighting the forces of darkness.

There are two sets where corpses are still sitting in their locations (including a Mignolaesque throne) waiting for our adventurers to find them. 

A scene like that is Indy, Mignola and a host of other fun movies and comics from the past. 

As I said earlier Crowe is a delight as a priest who claims the devil hates jokes and struggles with his arrogance and past mistakes.

He’s found a unique take on the normally dour priest character. You would want to have an espresso with him someday and hear his stories.

The acting from everyone else serviceable. They put that kid through the makeup ringer though.

And Franco Nero get a bunch of fun scenes as the pope. There’s actually too much pope in this, way beyond anything that makes sense but I bet everyone wanted to get their money’s worth from Nero. I think he delivers. 

This movie was part two of a Russell Crowe double feature for me. Part one was Land of Bad. And Crowe is suddenly having a career renaissance. Yeah he’s kind of Nic Cage slumming it but he’s also delivering quality work on roles where he could just phone the thing in. 

It’s not his fault they didn’t make five Master and Commander movies or a Nice Guy’s sequel. 

Hey, there’s still time. 

But in the meantime watching him carry a slight horror flick with not much more than easy charm and a Vespa is a good time.