Did you ever feel that King of New York could have done with a bit more Wing Chun? Did you ever think that John Woo’s films weren’t quite Catholic enough? That the siege of Troy might have been handled a bit more successfully if the Greeks had a bazooka? If your answer is yes to even one of these questions, then Barthélémy Grossmann’s old-school beat-’em-is for you, a violent multifaith mob movie with a script so fantastically absurd it can only come from the mind of French auteur Luc Besson, who somehow segued from Le Cinema du Look of the ’80s to Le Cinema du Kaboom of the ’90s.
It’s been 32 years since Besson unveiled his international breakout hit Léon, but it’s yesterday once more in Father Joe, which begins in uptown New York, sometime in the pre-internet ’90s, with the unmistakable sounds of the Notorious B.I.G. blasting out on the radio of a blinged-out town car. Veteran gangster Lino (Michael Rispoli) is taking his trophy girlfriend into the depths of a desolate industrial estate, where bored lackeys with guns and gold chains keep watch. “People would kill to know about this place,” he says, which isn’t quite the flex he thinks it is, and his date is right to be nervous.
“This place” is a drug lab, and while Lino is checking out his investment, a man in black starts picking of his crew with the stealth of a ninja and the armory of the Marine Corp. After shooting Lino in the foot, the stranger reveals himself as Father Joe (Kiefer Sutherland), an actual priest who takes on Manhattan’s drug dealers wearing his work clothes. “I’m here to put you back on the right track,” he says, and orders him to confess.
Being a good Catholic boy, as all mobsters used to be, Lino does so, and Father Joe lets him live on two conditions: One, no selling drugs to kids under the age of 21. “You can’t save everyone,” he reasons, with a strangely beatific smile. The other condition is way more Bessonian: Father Joe injects Lino with a complex homemade virus that will become deadly within seven days. To stay alive, Lino must attend Communion every week at Father Joe’s Church on 118th 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 wiseguys, who line up to take a little blue pill while everyone else gets a wafer.
Father Joe’s operation, which is decimating the local drug trade, is hardly undercover (unless you count the secret arms chamber behind a statue of the Virgin Mary), and pretty soon it comes to the attention of crime boss Giu (Al Pacino), who has noticed a dip in takings lately. Giu pays Father Joe a visit and gets infected with the same virus after being lured into the confession box. Giu, however, is not as gullible as the men who work for him and gets himself to the hospital for a thorough medical. While Giu is doing this, the story shifts up a gear. Vulnerable local children have started going missing, which may or may not have something to do with a privately run hospital, where rich parents pay through the nose for organ transplants of a very dubious provenance.
This sudden shift from drugs to body parts suggests that Father Joe may have been intended as a mini-series (or at the very least a comic book), having the freewheeling quality of ’the ’70s TV show Kung Fu. Father Joe himself certainly has the backstory for it, being 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, it also opens up room for a sassy sidekick: 16-year-old drug casualty Felicity, who’s played by Ever Anderson, daughter of The Fifth Element star Milla Jovovich. A child from a broken home, Felicity soon goes native and wants in on Father Joe’s set-up, much to his horror.
Despite this strange digression, Besson’s script soon gets back on track when Giu gets the results of his tests back and declares war on Father Joe. And this does mean war; Grossmann’s deliriously violent actioner commands an insane amount of firepower but still finds time for some classic throwbacks — such as a fantastically staged fist fight in an elevator — while the body count climbs into the heights of a Takeshi Miike movie.
Amazingly, Al Pacino is about the only thing that isn’t over the top here, generously giving center stage to Keifer Sutherland in a role that’s fun, unbelievable — and sometimes unbelievably funny (wait for the cardinal to deliver the punchline) — but, like Besson’s 2023 film Dogman, it’s never laughable, such is everyone’s commitment. Is it any good? Who knows. It’s certainly the most balls-out, no-f*cks-given rock’n’roll phenomenon to hit the Lido this year — and that includes the Gallagher brothers.
Title: Father JoeFestival: Venice (Venice Open – Out Of Competition)Director: Barthélémy GrossmannScreenwriter: Luc BessonCast: Kiefer Sutherland, Ever Anderson, Al Pacino, Michael RispoliWorld sales: KinologyRunning time: 1 hr 46 mins
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