The Rosary Murders

Murder mysteries generally speaking are criminal fantasies, outside of those based on real-life or so-called true crime. "The Rosary Murders" is based on a neo-noir novel by William X. Kienzle who was a real catholic priest. The story involves a series of murders associated with people in the catholic church, some laymen/laywomen while others are clergy. The murderer leaves behind a rosary. Donald Sutherland plays Father Koesler, a sort of priest-turned-detective. Also, at one point, the murderer confesses to the Koesler and he has to decide if he should break the church law of keeping confession confidential.

Typically, civilians outside of law enforcement are not supposed to engage in their own investigations of a crime being handled by the police. However in this story Father Koesler is given a lot of leeway to explore the case and interview witnesses. It turns out there's a backstory involving a nun who has entered into a cloistered convent where she has taken vows of silence. Koesler realizes she knows something crucial to the case.

Overall, I didn't find this film very entertaining. It was interesting, but also very gruesome and the overall feel was almost so real it was verging on not being terribly entertaining. Strangely films like "The Silence of the Lambs", though gruesome, are compelling from beginning to end. I didn't find that true with this film. Compelling but not really entertaining, and if it's not entertaining, what's the point?

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)

I like religious horror and giallos. For example one of my favorite horror films is Alice Sweet Alice, I think The Exorcist is a well-written drama, and I lean towards the Italian films with spiritual or religious imagery. The Rosary Murders deals with a lot of complex issues in the Catholic church, someone might argue the plot of this film is absurd, but it's not. A priest cannot tell on a child rapist or a serial killer even if they confess. One of the reasons I am giving this flick a solid six is because it attempted to confront these kinds of issues head-on, as well as other problems like overly focusing on sexuality in the American conservative churches to the point of insanity, and the mandatory celibacy of priests.

But to see Donald Sutherland in this film a scant fifteen years after the epic supernatural giallo, Don't Look Now, is a little sad. The Rosary Murders would have been so much better handled by a director with a better eye, who actually understood lighting and atmosphere and editing techniques. Instead, this movie looks like it could have been made for tv, and I consider it a stylistic flaw when handling this kind of subject matter. No one wants to watch a movie about religious murders that looks like an episode of Hill Street Blues.