Priest

The fast-paced action and impressive design can't disguise the cliched dialogue and shallow plot of Priest.

Priest (Paul Bettany, left) finishes off Familiar #1 (Josh Wingate) in Screen Gems' sci-fi action thriller PRIEST.

Priest (3D)
Director: Scott Stewart
Starring: Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Maggie Q, Cam Gigandet

How's this for a great postmodern pulp-movie mash-up? In a dystopian Wild West futureworld, mankind huddles in fortress cities ruled by ruthless tyrants. Meanwhile, in the surrounding desert badlands, a superhuman half-vampire cowboy is breeding an outlaw army of bloodsucking monsters to avenge bitter defeat many years before in a devastating war with the humans. Defying his bosses, only a renegade warrior monk with Jedi-style martial arts skills can stop them. And all in neck-chomping, shotgun-blasting, gloriously pointless 3D. What's not to like?

Loosely based on a Korean graphic novel, Priest is an enjoyably demented sci-fi horror Western with lashings of bloodthirsty vampire-slaying action. Like a kind of low-rent Tarantino exercise, it stacks up knowing homages to Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns, The Searchers, Star Wars, Mad Max, The Matrix and other superior films. For fans of shameless genre moviemaking, this is geek bait par excellence. All it lacks is a sense of its own absurdity, and possibly a tongue-in-cheek cameo by Simon Pegg.

It's pure trash, of course. The bluff, blunt dialogue is almost entirely composed of clichés, leaving capable actors such as Bettany and the underused Urban with little to do other than growl and scowl like second-division hams. Also, the fast-moving plot throws up some potentially fascinating echoes of contemporary social and political issues, particularly the Native American vampire parallels, only to whoosh past in search of the next razzle-dazzle action sequence. The director Scott Stewart clearly does not do subtext. On this evidence, he barely even does text.

Wiry and world-weary, Bettany makes a convincingly haunted action-man hero for this troubled world. Priest marks his second collaboration with Stewart, having already played an angel of vengeance in last year's Legion. The willowy British star must be wondering how his career took such a schlocky sideways turn. Less than a decade ago, he was a magnetically intense presence in classy dramas such as Dogville and A Beautiful Mind. Now he mostly seems to be typecast as psycho-killers. The curse of The Da Vinci Code, perhaps?

Still, at least Bettany's nameless character is allowed the luxury of two dimensions. Everybody else is lucky to get one, from Christopher Plummer's power-crazed despot to Maggie Q as a fellow Jedi-style vampire-hunter, providing this testosterone-heavy yarn with its sole hint of chaste romantic tension.

In fairness, action is plainly Stewart's forte. Especially strong are the Matrix-like hand-to-hand combat scenes and the explosive headbutting contest between a rocket-powered motorcycle and an armoured train. Even more impressive is the film's striking retro-futuristic art design, with its towering cathedral cities and skyscraper-sized desert statues. What a pity the script does not contain the same depth of smart, inventive detail.

Even though it ends up being more Blade than Blade Runner, there is still much to enjoy about this revved-up exercise in pulp cinema. Priest looks great, blasts along at high speed, and thankfully avoids the crucial mistake of taking itself too seriously. Shallow as a puddle, for sure, but never boring.