Brendan Gleeson, Kelly Reilly
“CALVARY” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 15 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge, the AMC Studio 30, and the Cinemark Plaza)
100 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Not even a great-ish performance from Brendan Gleeson can disguise the confusion at the heart of “Calvary,” the new Irish movie from writer/director John Michael McDonagh.
As the film begins it seems to be setting up a Hitchcockian dilemma. In the confessional, Father James (Gleeson) is threatened by a parishioner who as a child was repeatedly raped by his parish priest.
The perpetrator is long dead, but the victim still wants revenge. He announces (we hear his voice, but don’t see him) that in just a week he will kill Father James. The fact that James is a good priest and in no way connected to the long-ago outrage will only make for a more devastating “statement.”
James thinks he knows who this individual is. And his superior informs him that when a priest’s life is threatened, the sanctity of the confessional is no longer an issue. James is free to go to the police.
But he doesn’t…which is only one of many improbabilities McDonagh pile atop one another.
Butler's Cinema Scene 