The Rite

TedFlicks Rating:

$2.50 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50

THE WRONG

“The Rite” is a paycheck for Anthony Hopkins.  Not that your critic has anything against actors getting work, especially in current economic times.  It’s just that sometimes one has to be a tad selective about one’s material.  Hopkins is at a point in his career where he ought to be able to do that — unless he invested his life savings with Bernie Madoff.

The “Rite” in question is the Roman Catholic rite of exorcism, the expulsion of the Devil’s creatures from the bodies of the possessed.  Helmer Mikael Håfström and scribes Michael Petroni (screenplay) and Matt Baglio (book) are on treacherous ground.  William Friedkin did an extraordinary job with the same subject matter in The Exorcist (1973).  But in film it seems that it is the constitutional right of every generation to reinvent the wheel.  In this regard, filmmakers display a bit of hubris with a snide reference to the 1973 film in their screenplay.

Pic’s dilemma is actually an identity crisis.  It starts with a title card saying “based on true events.”  Beware of truth.  It really is often stranger than fiction — and less believable.  What begins as a horror pic wherein high school senior and beginner mortician Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) embalms a corpse (tight shots of him sewing closed the stiff’s mouth are beyond disgusting) morphs into a science fiction version of a crisis of faith.  Michael and his dad (senior mortician Istvan Kovak played by Rutger Hauer in a total waste of talent) operate a funeral parlor in Chicago.  A top student, Michael has college ambitions, but all dad will pay for are mortuary science and the seminary.  Michael opts for the latter, thinking that he’ll resign after getting his degree and before taking his final priestly vows.

Father Matthew, head of the seminary and ably played by Toby Jones, has other ideas for Michael — with a bit of arm-twisting, Michael is off to Rome for exorcism school.  It seems that the Vatican has decreed that every diocese in America should have at least one exorcist — why, there have been half-a-million reports of demonic possession in America in the last year alone, Matthew says.

Placed under the tutelage of Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins) a priest with more than 2,000 exorcisms to his credit, Kovak’s story veers off into the twilight zone.  It’s all due to Michael’s crisis of faith, which sort of comes out of the blue.  Heck, he entered the seminary only to get a free college education.  Pic offers no clue, despite numerous flashbacks, that he has a real religious vocation or even that he is a believing Catholic.  A potential romantic interest in the form of journalist Angeline (Alice Braga), who is researching exorcism for a story, goes nowhere.  She appears to have been added to the cast to move the plot along.  Pic stagnates until a demon possesses Father Trevant, who seems to have his own crisis of faith after losing a soul to the Devil.  Evidently one can exorcise the Devil’s disciples only if one believes in the existence of the Devil.  Michael must perform an emergency exorcism on Father Trevant — which is totally against all the teachings of the Vatican’s exorcism school.  To do so, he must convince the demon that he believes that the Devil exists.  Pic’s denouement hinges on whether Michael can muster faith, belief, and guts.

Tech credits are adequate, including sound recording.  Some dialogue is in Italian with English subtitles — and it is here that one glaring anachronism raises its head.  Trevant like Hopkins, is supposed to be Welsh.  He is a longtime resident of Italy.  Pic’s action takes place mainly in Rome.  Why in Heaven’s name one of his lines is uttered in Neapolitan dialect is a mystery to your critic.  Perhaps it is the Devil’s work.

“The Rite” runs 113 minutes and is rated PG-13.  Don’t bother seeing it.  You’ll just be doing the Devil’s work.

—30—