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Have you heard? Apparently there's some priests in the Catholic church that might be, um, gay. And apparently this might be interfering with their vows of chastity, not to mention their vows of not being gay.
John Deery, in his directorial debut, uses the Church as a jumping off point for his film, though it's not based on any specific event. Set in Ireland, the film starts with a priest's suicide and then moves on to a seminary student being expelled. At first the two events seem disconnected, but thanks to some dogged investigating (the official type of movie investigating of Ireland) by reporter David Foley (Jason Barry) -- no, not that Dave Foley -- a link begins to surface, along with more troublesome information. The Catholics close ranks to cover it all up, culminating in -- gasp! -- a television talk show where the Church is confronted live!
The horror! Foley's heart is in the right place but he's got his pacing and plotting all wrong. The movie feels like a docudrama that's 'based on true events,' to the point where we wish Deery could have spiced it up a bit. Then we remember: He could have spiced it up! Long scenes of people reading letters to themselves and playing soccer, plus that disastrously obvious closing talk show sequence serve to rob the movie of any momentum it ever manages to develop.
Catholic nay-sayers will probably have a field day with the movie, but most would be better served by any one of the numerous documentaries that cover the same topic.
