Calvary

The Irish Catholic Church is constructed from the same unexplainable beauty and windswept violence as the Sligo coast where John Michael McDonough set his incisive, necessary and brutal film "Calvary."

World-weary Father James (brilliant, brooding Brendan Gleeson) is anonymously informed that he shall, within a week, pay with his own life for the confessant's consistent childhood rape by another priest.

"I'm going to kill you, Father, because you've done nothing wrong," the man says. "You're innocent. But make your peace, and get your affairs in order before I kill you Sunday week."

The next seven days follow Father James ministering to his tight-knit but troubled townspeople. The pub culture cast includes butcher Jack (Chris O'Dowd) and his coke-snorting wife Veronica (Orla O'Rourke), who is having affairs with several men, including African Simon (Isaach De Bankol�).

"She's either bi-polar or lactose-intolerant," says Jack. "One of the two."

Wealthy sad-sack Michael Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran) is so lost, alone and bored he literally pisses on priceless art; and notes, "All sins are past. Otherwise they aren't sins, just evil thoughts." He also writes one hundred thousand Euro checks to the church fund because "all philanthropy is the expiation of guilt." Virginal Milo (Killian Scott) is so lonesome and sex-starved he's getting into trans porn (what he calls "chicks with dicks"); the village constable, meantime, is also messing with some rough trade.

Dying American writer (gloriously grumpy M. Emmet Walsh) also leans on the Father for deliveries of whiskey, chocolate and conversation. "You know you're really old when no one says the word 'death' around you anymore," he observes.

Father James' daughter Fiona, from his pre-vows marriage (haunting ginger Kelly Reilly), shows up for a brief visit following a botched suicide ("You made the classic mistake and sliced the wrong direction" more than one villager greets her).

Christ was crucified on Calvary, and Father James is slated to meet his maker on picturesque yet wistful Sligo Bay. The apt and timely commentary on the repercussions of Catholicism's institutionalized pedophilia and rape collide with the often-unreasonable demands on other modern-day, guileless clergy. Instead of finding and nurturing compassion, this sea of sinners are all "friends who are just enemies you haven't made yet."

"Calvary"
Blu-ray
$19.96
http://www.calvary-movie.com