Gleeson shines in 'Calvary'

ONE OF THE sleeper pleasures of 2011 was "The Guard," pairing Brendan Gleeson and director John Michael McDonagh in a comedy about a crafty Irish cop.

Now they've reteamed for "Calvary." This time Gleeson's an Irish priest, and if you've seen the unforgettable poster (the cross on the priest's chest is comprised of bullet holes) you understand this movie is not so funny.

The first scene is a corker - Gleeson takes confession from an anonymous man who reports that he was abused as a child by a priest, and now will take revenge in one week's time by killing one.

The twisted twist: He doesn't want to kill the offending priest, or a bad priest. To truly even the scales, he wants to kill a good priest, the better to take from the church what was taken from him.

And Gleeson's Father James, by any measure, is a good one. A man who came to the priesthood late in life after losing his wife to cancer, a man who found a redemptive calling ministering to others.

He works tirelessly, and thanklessly. A theme of McDonagh's movie is that the fallout from the abuse scandals includes a kind of reactionary anti-religiousness. People haven't just turned away from the church, they've turned away from faith completely.

Gleeson's priest has futile encounters with amoral capitalists, promiscuous home-wreckers, remorseless serial killers (Domhnall Gleeson) and a couple potential suicides, including his own daughter (Kelly Reilly).

These scenes are far too schematic, the characters too metaphorical and the dialogue too of-the-page to be believed, though I'm not sure McDonagh (brother to "Seven Psychopaths" director Martin) means them to be received literally (Aidan Gillen plays an atheist doctor, and gives a meta speech about being handed the role of the atheist doctor).

To that end, he has a problem. Gleeson is such a wonderful actor he grounds each of these scenes in its own reality, and in the end gives the movie whatever tragic resonance it manages to achieve.