Have you ever felt that way? King of New York Could I have done with more Wing Chun? Did you ever think that John Woo’s films weren’t Catholic enough? Could the Siege of Troy have been dealt with more successfully if the Greeks had had a bazooka? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, then Barthélémy Grossmann’s Old Man is a film for you, a violent multi-religious thriller with a sublimely absurd script that could only have come from the mind of French auteur Luc Besson, who somehow spun off from Le Cinema du Look in the 1980s to Le Cinema du Kaboom in the 1990s.
It has been 32 years since Besson revealed his international success Leonbut it was yesterday again Father Joewhich begins in uptown New York City, sometime in the 1990s before the advent of the Internet, with the unmistakable sounds of Notorious B.I.G. blaring from the radio of a crowded city car. Veteran gangster Lino (Michael Rispoli) takes his beloved girlfriend deep into a desolate industrial zone, where she is watched by bored henchmen with guns and gold chains. “People would kill to know more about this place,” he says, and he’s not as resilient as he thinks he is, and it’s fitting that his companion feels nervous.
“This place” is a drug lab, and while Leno is examining his investment, a man in black begins picking off his crew using a ghost ninja and a Marine armory. After shooting Leno in the foot, the stranger reveals himself to be Father Joe (Kiefer Sutherland), a real-life priest who confronts drug dealers in Manhattan while wearing his business clothes. “I’m here to get you back on track,” he says, and orders him to confess.
Because he is a good Catholic boy, as all gangsters used to be, Lino does so, and Father Joe allows him to live under two conditions: First, he prohibits the sale of drugs to children under the age of 21. “You can’t save everyone,” he says with a strangely cheerful smile. The other condition is more Bisonic: Father Joe injects Leno with a complex, homemade virus that will become fatal within seven days. To survive, Lino must attend Communion every week at Father Joe’s church at No. 118y Street, where he will be given a temporary antidote. But when Lino arrives at the church, he is surprised to see a number of other Elders, who are lining up to eat a little blue pill while everyone else gets a chip.
Father Joe’s operation, which is taking down the local drug trade, is anything but secret (unless you count the secret weapons room behind a statue of the Virgin Mary), and soon comes to the attention of crime boss Geo (Al Pacino), who has noticed a decline in seizures recently. Giu visits Father Gu and is infected with the same virus after being lured into the confession box. However, Gio is not as naive as the men who work for him and goes to the hospital for a comprehensive medical examination. As Geo does this, the story changes. Vulnerable local children have begun to disappear, which may or may not have something to do with a privately run hospital, where wealthy parents pay through the nose for organ transplants of highly questionable provenance.
This sudden shift from drugs to body parts indicates this Father Joe Perhaps it was intended as a miniseries (or at least a comic book), with the freewheeling quality of a ’70s TV show’ Kung fu. Father Joe himself certainly has a backstory to this, as he is a war veteran who married an Asian woman who died young and lost his grieving daughter to an overdose. This not only explains Father Joe’s benevolence, but also opens up room for a sassy sidekick: 16-year-old drug victim Felicity, played by Ever Anderson, the daughter of… The fifth element Star Milla Jovovich. A child from a broken home, Felicity soon returns to her home country and wants to participate in Father Joe’s preparation, much to his horror.
Despite this strange digression, Besson’s script soon gets back on track when Geo recovers his test results and declares war on Father Joe. And this He does It means war. Grossman’s ferocious, delirious actor commands a tremendous amount of firepower, but still finds time for some classic throwbacks—such as a fantastically staged fist fight in an elevator—as the body count climbs to the climax of Takeshi Miike’s film.
Surprisingly, Al Pacino is about the only thing that… not so Up here, he generously gives center stage to Keifer Sutherland in a role that’s fun and incredible — and sometimes incredibly funny (wait for the cardinal to deliver the punchline) — but, like Besson’s 2023 film DogmanIt’s never funny, that’s everyone’s commitment. Is it good? who knows. It’s definitely the craziest, most indescribable rock ‘n’ roll phenomenon to hit the Lido this year – and that includes the Gallagher brothers.
address: Father Joe
festival: Rifle (open rifle – out of competition)
exit: Barthelemy Grossmann
screenwriter:Luc Besson
ejaculate: Kiefer Sutherland, Ever Anderson, Al Pacino, Michael Rispoli
Global Sales: Kinesiology
Operating time: 1 hour and 46 minutes
