Father Joe is dumber than a box of rocks and more entertaining than a box of frogs. There is nothing to recommend Father Joe except for its commitment to being the stupidest possible piece of action entertainment. Luc Besson, who wrote and produced the film for director Barthélémy Grossmann, clearly decided to string together the rightly discarded ideas from his repertoire to make this utter silliness. It cannot be recommended, but there are worse ways to spend 116 minutes.
It’s the 1990s in Manhattan and somewhere uptown is a church home to a selection of both stone-faced Vietnamese orphans and weaponry major enough to fight a war single-handed. For that is what Father Joe (Kiefer Sutherland, who heroically keeps a straight face throughout) is doing. He busts into various drug labs run by various mafiosi and kills all the various henchmen, while flashbacks to Joe’s pre-Father experiences in Vietnam explain his particular life choices. But once he’s destroyed the drug labs he doesn’t kill the mafiosi, oh no. Instead he injects them with a virus he made himself, and forces them to come to communion once a week in order to get the antidote. Their generous donations to the collection plate don’t hurt a bit either. All this extortion and mayhem hilariously runs without a hitch until two things happen. Firstly, in one lair Father Joe sees an unconscious teenage addict, whose name is eventually revealed to be Felicity (Ever Anderson, aka Milla Jovovich’s daughter, who is one of Mr. Besson’s ex-wives), and takes her back to church with him. Secondly, the head of the crime syndicate, Giuseppe (Al Pacino clearly funding his retirement), gets annoyed that someone is interfering with his business of selling drugs to kids. Gosh, I sure do hope things don’t escalate to the point we see a gunfight in a church. That would just be ridiculous!
Well, everything – every single little thing – in this movie is completely ridiculous. One fight sequence in a toy shop involves Father Joe having to kick party balloons out of the way so he can deliver the killing blow to somebody. One lair can only be accessed by squeezing ‘the right titty’ of a mannequin. Father Joe does all his crime-fighting in full priestly regalia, including wide-brimmed hat and crosses large enough to choke a vampire. Various orphans as well as scary-looking and silent church deputy Lao Chin (Alain Figlarz) are expert in various martial arts. To top it off Felicity, who cheerily gives up drugs after one (1) talking-to from Father Joe, is so determined to be helpful she invites herself along to a multi-faith rescue of a bunch of kids. Why must Father Joe work in coalition with a rabbi and an imam to rescue a bunch of kids? Why, those kids had the bad luck to be kidnapped by foreign organ farmers. But thank God Father Joe’s around to save the day!
It’s supposed to be impressive but it is just hilarious. Even as the various action sequences get incredibly bloodthirsty it is just impossible to take any of this seriously for one second. The big finale, which might as well involve a campfire sing-song of “Kumbaya,” goes so far over the top that the movie finally develops a sense of humour. Mr. Sutherland plays his part as straight as he did back in Young Guns and Young Guns II, even while Mr. Pacino has little to do but wear some excellent fur-lined coats and discuss the books he’s reading with various henchmen. (Dante’s Inferno and One Hundred Years of Solitude, thank you very much.) But even while it can’t be recommended, it’s been a while since something this dumb has been this much fun. Father Joe is not so bad it’s good: it’s so well-made because otherwise its badness would be unignorable. But it managed to cheer up an otherwise fairly serious Venice Film Festival, and will be a laugh riot for anyone needing to turn your brain off and be entertained. On that level Father Joe will always be there for you.
Father Joe recently played at the Venice International Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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