Though The Pope’s Exorcist is not a particularly good movie, it’s a fitting vehicle for Russell Crowe’s return to top billing, albeit one in which he appears grey-bearded and paunchy. As the titular priest, Crowe brings a welcome measure of cynicism to the movie’s jaundiced take on post-millennial Catholicism, and while it might have been even more fitting had the movie done more than mention the most pressing scandal to confront the Church in the last 50 years only in passing, the filmmakers were obviously not going to push their luck by trying to be topical. The main scandal they dig up is the Spanish Inquisition, which was handled more effectively many years ago by Monty Python. 

Still, there are comic elements on display that distinguish The Pope’s Exorcist from the usual head-spinning, pea soup-vomiting extravaganzas, and most are delivered by Crowe, whether purposely or not. His Father Gabriele Amorth is a polymath and something of a black sheep in the Vatican (his Vespa-riding skills are portrayed as that of an iconoclast), who obviously has the ear of a pontiff (Franco Nero) who keeps his own counsel to the best of his meager ability. Amorth’s main heresy, as far as his colleagues are concerned, is approaching his specialty without the necessary gravity. In an opening scene, Amorth is called upon to exorcise a young Italian man who can suddenly spout English profanity as fluently as Ozzie Osbourne, and while Amorth fulfills his task in a novel way, he also reveals that he thinks most possessions are either faked or the result of deep psychological trauma. But that somewhat compelling insight, like the nod to pedophilia, is pushed aside for the main story, which takes place at a castle in Spain that has been inherited by a widowed American woman (Alex Essoe) and her two children, the younger of whom, Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), becomes possessed. Amorth, accompanied by a younger local priest, Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), quickly realizes that the possession has something to do with the castle’s use as a site for torture during the Inquisition centuries before, an explanation that basically relieves the Vatican of any responsibility for the terror it inflicted since it was apparently the work of a servant of Satan. But, in any case, Amorth and Esquibel are put through their conventionally hellish paces, complete with finding the name of the demon and undergoing quasi-possession themselves.

It may not be saying much that Crowe makes the whole mess entertaining. His dodgy Italian accent and jaunty fashion sense congeal for an image of a “have holy water will travel” kind of free agent whose attachment to his higher calling seems nominal at best, and he pulls it off with more than a wink and a nod. He clearly seems to be enjoying himself. In fact, the ending is primed to make it seem as if Father Amorth might be worthy of a franchise (the character is based on a real person). If Crowe has decided, like Liam Neeson, that his serious acting days are behind him, playing the pope’s exorcist isn’t a bad gig to see out his twilight years. 

Opens July 14 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Pope’s Exorcist home page in Japanese