Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

To Kill a Priest (1988)

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Solidarity seen through a Cold War lens, i.e. plucky nationalist Catholics vs the club-wielding forces of darkness. The Solidarnosc we get here is against Communism (or, as translated here, Socialism), for religion, and barely aware of trade unionism. Instead, Father Alek (Lambert), a fictionalised version of the cleric Jerzy Popieluszko, enjoys a frustrated flirtation with Whalley while making the odd speech about the aspirations of the Poles. Alek then runs into a whole heap of trouble with gritty local Militia chief Harris, who bludgeons the priest and dumps him in the river before being dumped on himself by his superiors. The script (an international co-production number) sounds like a Lada service manual; Poland looks like the North Peckham Estate; The Zomo (secret police) behave like Keystone Cops; and the attempts to turn Father Al symbolically into JC himself offended even this card-carrying atheist.

Author: JMo 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Producer: Jean-Pierre Alessandri

Cast: Christopher Lambert, Ed Harris, Joss Ackland, Tim Roth, Timothy Spall, Peter Postlethwaite, Cherie Lunghi, Joanne Whalley, David Suchet full cast

Duration: 117 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.