So I approached this film with great
trepidation, and you probably won't be surprised to learn that the 2011 film Sacrifice (written and directed by Damian
Lee, who has made a whole bunch of films I've never heard of) is really pretty
awful. But we're here to look at the church in the film.
I'm pretty positive about the church
in this film, because the priest in this film, Father Porter, (played by
Christian Slater) wasn't always a priest. He was with the "special
forces" in Afghanistan with a team of four other soldiers. They each got a
one-word tattoo, a virtue, on his hand in solidarity. The other four had "freedom",
"family", "blood", "courage" on their hands and
Porter had "sacrifice" (TITLE DROP!).
The other four soldiers died, and Porter
has survivor's guilt. He decided become a priest because, as he says, "it
was the hardest thing I could possibly do. Stupid, right?" He is, to say
the least, conflicted about calling. He says, "Sometimes I wonder if I
chose God or He chose me. 'Cause if he chose me, He made a mistake."
But we see him doing a decent job in
his duties. An elderly woman comes to him and asks him to listen to her
confession. He responds, "Didn't I hear your confession last night?"
But he listens.
She tells the priest that sometimes
she thinks she'll end up in a higher level in heaven than her husband. She asks
him what she should do about this sin of pride. He gives her four Hail Mary's
but doesn't ask her to call in the morning.
While he's hearing her confession,
young thugs break into the collection box of the church and accidently knock
over and break the statue of the Virgin Mary. A young man named Mike, visiting
the church, offers a Virgin Mary statue to replace it. Mike is a drug dealer
and the statue he gives was stolen from drug overlords -- and it's composed of
pure heroin. But it's the thought that counts.
Father Porter also cares for John
Hebron, an undercover police officer who takes on the drug world's worst of the
worst. Because he caught some really bad guys, their associates came back and
killed his wife and daughter. This has turned him into a cop on the edge who
lives by his own rules. (Martin Riggs in Lethal
Weapon you say? Of course, but not nearly that good.)
We do hear, in a flashback, Father
Porter's memorial sermon for John's wife and daughter. "We celebrate the
lives of Anna and Noelle, and cherish them in our hearts as we commend them to
God's merciful love, the author of all life. God has created each person for
eternal life. Jesus, the Son of God, with His death and resurrection has broken
the chains of sin and death that bound humanity."
John, the cop, comes often to the
church to light candles in his wife's memory. The priest asks why he lights the
candles even though he doesn't believe in it. John says it's because his wife
believed in it. The priest says, "God works in mysterious ways,"
which is a reliable go to cliché in hack films. John pulls out a flask and
shares it with Father Porter. I'm assuming Kool-Aid was in the flask, but we're
never told.
You may not be surprised to hear
that eventually the bad guys come after that heroin statue in the church, and
it's up to the cop on the edge and the special forces priest to stop them.
For a decent funeral sermon and that
special forces training, I'm giving Father Porter and his church Three
Steeples.
(This film earns its R rating. And
on another pointless side note, the film opens at a game of the NHL finals. And
it appears literally dozens of hockey fans are in the stands.)
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