The Good Shepherd

"The Confessor" AKA "The Good Shepherd" is a well-acted drama.

The plot: Father Daniel Clemens (Slater) has uncovered a murder mystery involving other priests and corruption in his church. Can he uncover the truth?

Christian Slater puts in a good performance as usual. Parker also holds her own. The mystery is a little uneven and the ending is weak, but overall the movie is worth seeing. It goes in too many directions. The director made another movie called "Gone Dark" which is a hidden gem.

In the end: "The Confessor" is decent little mystery if you don't take it too seriously.

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Father Daniel Clemens (Christian Slater) does money solicitation and financial work for the church. He's called in for admiror Father Andrews who was arrested for murder. Andrews can't prove his innocence due to the seal of confession. Clemens has his friend McCaran (Stephen Rea). Cardinal Ledesna (Gordon Pinsent) orders Clemens to handle the case. He struggles to do PR and investigate with the help of reporter Madeline Finney (Molly Parker) with whom he has a past.

This is a Canadian production that pulled in some bigger actors. Stephen Rea is woefully underserved. It's obvious what they're setting him up for but it's a waste of a great actor. As a mystery, it doesn't lay out the clues and twists that well. The filmmaking is plain. It needs a better filmmaker to inject real intensity and brooding mood. Neither writer nor director seem to have gone on to do much else. The church's internal battle needs something bigger and more ominous. The forbidden love between Daniel and Madeline has no heat and is awkward when the heat is turned up. There are elements of a better film but this puts it together like a movie of the week. It's only when Stephen Rea, Slater, and Parker join forces do the movie starts pulling together.

Webb's film concerning a priest (Slater) who believes in a young priest who is accused of murder and claims he is innocent. Molly Parker is good as his former love interest/journalist who helps him out. The film is not amazing, it was actually quite lame in some of its cinematic moments, and felt so B-movie-ish. It was entertaining at times, but just too slow and didn't have the directorial flare that a good B movie should have or the quality of an A-movie. This was nowhere near as good as stuff like The Deal (also starring Slater) or even End Game (starring Cuba GOoding Jr.)... the best in this kind of genre is THe Sentinel which was a very good film despite it having a TV-movie like feel to it. THe Confessor is not the worst film, but its a bit worse than your average film so skip it unless you have a lot of time on your hands. IMDb Rating: 5.0, my rating: 6/10

Uneventful Opening.

+1 Star For the Priest who upholds the honor and integrity of the confessional despite having uh...how shall i say......'flaws' ?

Okay this movie really didn't have a lot of umph to it at all..

The ending was very quick and really didn't add anything.

-1 Star really for the whole 2nd half of the movie.

5/10 is probably being generous....

The story in itself was quite interesting, but I ran into something that happens too often. So many times when I know more than average about the situation/background of the story of a movie, I see loads of mistakes. Same here. I'm a catholic and found the mistakes regarding a.o. the Mass annoying. It is possible to say 'let us pray' directly after sermon (in week Masses), but then the priest won't continue to the creed, as he did in the movie (and as happens on Sundays and holidays). And the creed is said together, not only by the priest. Later on, things got worse. The priest entered the church, kneeled, and kissed the altar (all of this is indeed what happens in the beginning of Mass) and then ... he stepped away from the altar (huh?) and continued with 'let us pray' and the our father! LOL, he just skipped 2/3rd of the Mass ;-) And also the our father is prayed aloud by the entire congregation. There was much more to comment on, but 'nuf said about this topic: they should have done their research more thoroughly. Asking some catholics, going to Mass a few times themselves, or just looking in Wikipedia would have done the trick.