It
wasn’t that long ago that the Irish saved civilization, but by 1209 they are
apparently ready to go all in with the barbarians. Christianity has
consolidated its hold on Europe, so woe unto those who are not down with Rome’s
program. In this case, the Pope has decreed a relic held by a remote Irish monastery
should be moved to the Vatican. The Brothers know this is a mistake, but they still
faithfully comply. A ragtag group of the
faithful and the zealous will embark on a violent road trip in Brendan
Muldowney’s The Pilgrimage (trailer here), which opens
today in New York.
Supposedly,
The Rock of St. Matthias martyred the apostle who filled Judas’s vacancy, but
it caused the hurler to immolate immediately thereafter. Since then, anyone of
insufficient virtue who touches it, meets a similar fate. It might not look
like much, but The Rock sure would be handy to have on a crusade.
Frankly,
Brother Geraldus the Cistercian is more of an inquisition guy than a crusader,
but he has embraced his assignment from the Pope with typical fervor. In
exchange for safe passage, Geraldus has promised the aging Baron De Merville
absolution, but his rebellious heir, Raymond De Merville has cut his own deal
with the king. However, he did not bargain on the fierce fighting prowess of
The Mute, a lay penitent, who has taken a vow of silence. The Mute is more
concerned with protecting the young novice Brother Diarmuid than The Rock, but
he is certainly no stranger to killing.
There
are a few decent scenes of hack-and-slash action in Pilgrimage, but Heaven help us Brother, is it ever didactic.
Geraldus is such a prissy, preening, unsubtly vile anti-Catholic caricature, he
makes it difficult to get past his polemical howlers. At one point, when recalling
how he killed his own father on the rack for so-called heresy, Geraldus hisses:
“the problem wasn’t that he lost his faith in the Church, he’d lost his fear of
it.” Ooooh, how cold.
If
Muldowney had read a little Thomas Cahill and laid off the polemics, Pilgrimage could have been an agreeably
muddy and gritty action historical. Cinematographer Tom Comerford makes it all
look appropriately dark and dank. Most importantly, Jon Bernthal has the chops
and the presence for the silently glowering Mute. On the other hand, Stanley
Weber is a horror show of villainous tics and clichés as the mustache-twisting
Geraldus. Tom Holland, the new Spiderman nobody asked for, is a vanilla
wallflower non-entity as Diarmuid. However, John Lynch lends the film more
dignity and gravitas than it deserves as the noble Brother Ciarán.
