[FILM]
★★★
OUT NOW / CERT 15 103 MINS
DIRECTOR Julius Avery
CAST Russell Crowe, Franco Nero, Ralph Ineson, Daniel Zovatto, Laurel Marsden
PLOT The year is 1987. The religion is Catholicism. Father Gabriele Amorth (Crowe) is gainfully employed as the Vatican’s chief exorcist. When a child in Spain is apparently possessed by a demon, Amorth must team up with a younger priest (Zovatto) to renounce Satan and all his works.
IMAGINE A BUDDY-cop movie in which a grizzled maverick detective, whose quippy exterior masks a past trauma involving a shoot-out gone wrong, is paired with a rookie cop on a new case turning out to involve corruption going to the very heart of the establishment. Oh, and he’s also in trouble with those pencil pushers up at City Hall who have no time for his unorthodox methods. Got it? Okay, now imagine it’s not cops, it’s priests. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, you are now watching a buddy-priest movie.
Russell Crowe has a lot of fun playing the eponymous exorcist, and director Julius Avery’s movie essentially stands or falls by how on board you are with this central performance, which requires Crowe to speak in either Italian or Italian-accented English throughout, and recalls that bit in The Simpsons where Homer fantasises about living the life of an organised crime boss (“Molto bene!”). Attention, Universal Studios: next time you decide to reboot Super Mario Bros., don’t call Chris Pratt — get Big Russ and his little scooter on board.
The rest of the cast are of variable quality (shout out to the porcine performer whose presence enables Crowe to bellow “possess the pig!”), but there’s no denying Ralph Ineson (The Green Knight) as the voice of Asmodeus the demon, and there’s definitely a certain logic to casting Franco Nero (star of dozens of gialli and poliziotteschi films) as the Pope. Still, it’s essentially the Crowe show, and engagement tends to sag when he’s not around, nor are the majority of the narrative beats surprising if you’ve se
