I wish I’d known Brendan Gleeson thirty years ago. He’d have made a fantastic Irish Dirty Harry. Calvary didn’t need a Dirty Harry; it gets your attention without one. In the opening scene, an unseen man uses his confessional one-on-one to threaten killing his priest on the beach the following Sunday. Because the priest is bad? No. Distinctly because he’s good … to send a message about abuses within the Catholic Church. What message would such action send? Lord if I know; I just know it got my attention immediately.
We never see the would-be assassin confessor in the opening. Hence, Calvary makes a fair mystery over the week from confessional to beach. The mystery is buoyed by an entire cavalcade of colorful folks looking to knock Father James (Gleeson) down a peg. The man seemingly can’t hold a single conversation without absorbing a tossed cigarette or his church burning down. Even the people we can safely cross off the list proved burdensome: his suicidal daughter (Kelly Reilly) needs a father, not a Father, and his real life son Domhnall plays a convicted murderer/cannibal in need of both. Meanwhile, the town robber baron (Dylan Moran) is trying to buy his salvation. Yes, the rich man who takes a (presumably expensive) painting off the wall and urinates on it just to show he can is not among the primary suspects, but that doesn’t make Father James any happier.
I challenge any viewer to find a scene in which Father James isn’t tested in some form. Even the scenes with his weasel of a partner, Father Leary, are steeped in B-list problems – you know, things he’d attend to if he weren’t being killed on Sunday. Calvary is very odd in that on the one hand it has almost nothing nice to say about the Catholic Church and yet on the other, we are drawn completely to the quiet, determined good emanating from Father James, certainly a product of the Catholic Church. We look at his predicament and know he deserves better – not because of good represented by the Church or because of his daughter (he joined 
the priesthood after losing his wife), but because he cares, and he cares when all that surrounds him are obstacles.
Calvary is a wicked study in cynicism. Right before the climax, the direction/editing revisits the rest of the cast with respect to Father James and it’s both sad and poignant 1) how the father played these interactions with best intentions and 2) how little the subject gained from the interaction. Here was my thought process watching this montage: “Didn’t help him … didn’t help him … didn’t help her … didn’t help him … might have helped her, a little, maybe, sort of …didn’t help him … didn’t help him … you know what? I’m gonna go back to the one he helped a little, maybe, and call it a win.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that Calvary, like the title implies, is intended to be a modern-day Jesus parable. The good man sentenced to death playing out what might be the last days of his life as he would most any other week – obviously, there is still good to do. What I loved about this parallel is how much closer than most it feels to my version of Jesus – a good man constantly challenged to be good while surrounded on all sides by those who seek to prove him lesser. And Jesus, in turn, claiming no air of superiority, just a desire to make the world better. You can decide for yourself whether such was achieved; it’s been two millennia and I’d say the case could still be argued either way.
♪Father … gonna kill you man
Brought my gun to Sunday, preach
Gonna shoot you on the beach
Father, life will just be run
Cause now I’m gonna take it all away
Father, ooh
I know you’re not gonna cry
If you’re not back again this time tomorrow
[I’ll] carry on, carry on because nothing really matters♫
Rated R, 100 Minutes
D: John Michael McDonagh
W: John Michael McDonagh
Genre: Modern day big towering two-fisted Jesus
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who can separate their feelings about the Catholic Church from individuals representing the Catholic Church
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Defensive Catholics
♪ Parody inspired by “Bohemian Rhapsody”
