The Rosary Murders

As slow-burns go, Fred Walton's mysterious catholic-bounded thriller takes the cake with its minimal and sombre treatment. It's one of those progressive and morally hounded plots (from William X. Kienzle's novel), which is a puzzle to decipher, as you find yourself also personally getting involved with the brooding investigation with realistic characters. Some of the scheming is a bit hard to swallow, but for most part it's smartly penned (by Elmore Leonard and Fred Walton) and the low-key approach seems to make you concentrate on the lyrical waxing (especially on those commitments to the priesthood and the self-doubting). However the pacing seemed to plod a bit too much, where some monotonous patches seemed to lose focus. Two stalwart figure heads; an impressive Donald Sutherland and equally so Charles Durning are engagingly strong. Sutherland has a sincere presence about him, that even if he looks half-asleep. He's still watchable. Josef Sommer and Belinda Bauer offer able support. Walton's direction is slickly presented, but feels shapeless and dry. At least he did construct a subtle, startlingly dreary atmosphere and the music score etches out a placidly haunting vibe. The violence happened mostly off-screen, but managed to leave a chilling mark and the Detroit setting complements the weary imprint. A sleepy and glum, but well-acted and rather moving thriller.

Donald Sutherland is a Detroit priest who hears the confession of a serial killer with a grudge against the clergy, and is later forced by the ethics of his vocation to (reluctantly) hunt down the murderer himself, unearthing a spine-chilling string of motivation behind each new death. It could have been just another routine shocker, but a clever script and some unusually taciturn direction turns the otherwise familiar material into a modest but intriguing whodunit (actually more a 'whydunit') set against the rituals and mysteries of the Catholic Church, always a reliable source of guilt and intrigue. The steady accumulation of clues and evidence is interrupted only by an unsurprising (and unnecessary) romantic subplot, which happily compromises neither the mystery itself nor Sutherland's oath of celibacy.

Though not as riveting as its premise will have you believe, The Rosary Murders still manages to deliver moments of tension & suspense within a monotonously executed drama and is anchored by Donald Sutherland's measured performance as a conflicted priest. A run-of-the-mill effort at best when it comes to direction, the story is undone by its long runtime, an unnecessary subplot that goes nowhere & more but the mood & build-up before the serial killings is done well and the dilemma our protagonist faces is rendered with sincerity, along with the conflicted interpretation of Church law & teachings. However, the picture as a whole needed a tightly-edited plot to keep things interesting throughout and carries the look n feel of a TV film in more ways than one.

Donald Sutherland is good, but he can't make this film worth seeing all by himself. The director doesn't seem to have the temperament that's needed for a successful thriller, the plot moves slowly and monotonously, and the whole thing just plods on to an ending that fails to explain the killer's motivation satisfyingly. (*1/2)

Donald Sutherland plays Father Robert Koesler, a priest in Detroit who hears the confession of a murderer who is going around offing various priests and nuns. After doing some amateur sleuthing, Koesler figures out who the killer is. But he's bound by church law to say nothing. His superiors - among them, the hard nosed, conservative Ted Nabors (Charles Durning) - believe that nothing can violate the sanctity of the confessional. So, as you can guess, Koesler is a very troubled man. Koznicki (Josef Sommer), the detective on the case, is not as concerned with the rules of the Catholic church, aiming to catch himself a killer.

This sure sounds like a neat premise for a thriller, but on the whole the story isn't told in a particularly interesting way. The subplot of a potential romance, between Koesler and Pat Lennon (a reasonably appealing Belinda Bauer), really doesn't add anything to the material. Fred Walton ("When a Stranger Calls" '79, "April Fool's Day" '86) directs with competence and gives the proceedings a very somber quality. On location shooting ("The Rosary Murders" was actually filmed in Detroit) helps a bit, although the story doesn't exactly hold any surprises. (The killer turns out to be a truly disgusting piece of work.) That's too bad, considering that the two credited screenwriters are director Walton and the great author Elmore Leonard. There is a moment around the one hour mark that struck this viewer as simply too hard to swallow.

There are some solid actors and familiar faces among the cast: Anita Barone, Rex Everhart, Stefan Gierasch, Tom Mardirosian, Mark Margolis, James Murtaugh, Lupe Ontiveros, Addison Powell. But the movie is anchored the most by Sutherland, who plays Koesler as an easygoing, likable chap with a fairly progressive and compassionate attitude.

He and Durning manage to make this worth seeing.

Six out of 10.