THE POPE'S EXORCIST (2023) ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Julius Avery
Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe,
Franco Nero, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney,
Laurel Marsden, Cornell John, Ryan O'Grady
Wearing a cassock, riding a Vespa, and armed with a peculiar accent and an impish sense of humor, Russell Crowe goes to work battling Satan as the Vatican's chief exorcist. The case he's assigned to in the movie involves a kid in Spain who's doing most of what Linda Blair did in "The Exorcist", minus the thing with the crucifix and the pea soup. It's formula stuff at this point, with lots of sound and fury and special effects, and you can sense that a quieter, more understated movie might've been way more creepy, but we're going for an audience here, right? And speaking of creepy, the script suggests that the Inquisition was the work of the devil, implicitly letting the Church off the hook for the most heinous chapter in its long, troubled history. Maybe a sequel will try to whitewash the clergy sex abuse scandal.
