Padre Pio

Not sure why it's called Padre pio, it barely showed him. Even then it showed him in a bad light. Bad music score, camera work, really nothing redeeming about it.

It's like watching a really bad movie with a fee clips of a worse movie popping it.

Why not make a movie that actually shows him, the stigmata, lines of people coming to confess to him, his ability to read what was bothering people at confessions.

Why put in the nudity and profanity? Why use his name to promote this boring garbage.

We thought it would be good after hearing about LaBeouf converting it would be good. It's not remotely that.

I've genuinely anticipated this movie, especially after the multiple pushbacks of the release date. I even saw the interviews LaBeouf has done about the sincerity behind his role as Padre Pio and conversion to Catholicism.

Unfortunately, the following of the political unfolding was very mundane and bare. And worse off, there was minimal tie between the current events to Padre Pio's influence on the people outside of maybe the Eucharist and a couple confessions.

I certainly can say every scene LaBeouf was in, he carried extremely well, but these were sparsely placed throughout the film, and felt very removed from the rest of the movie. However, these scenes still did have a depth and spiritual sense of sacredness that I wish pervaded more of the movie. The moments of his anguish and torment were compelling, but short lived, especially because they were juxtaposed against the aforementioned weakness of the exterior events.

When showing the forced labor the villagers were facing, the cinematography was very jagged and disorienting. I understand it was meant to instill a sense of anxiety and arduousness against the still, calm lensing of Pio's sanctuary, but it was so pronounced that it was just distracting and dizzying. I could get used to an Oliver Wood style of camera shake in an action movie, but it didn't work with this film.

There was little to no tension to the storyline to really illicit a yearn for resolution. Because of this, the film lacked emotional substance, and not stakes. I'm usually content with slower paced movies as long as there's still a sense of building tension.

Again, Shia's performance did stand out, but outside of that, I'm afraid to say this movie really did not carry the viewer through the depth and influence of Padre Pio. Not Shia's fault, more on the writers and director.

I think a better film around this monastic spiritual genre would be "Of Gods and Men."

You will leave the theater still knowing nothing about Padre Pio. I think for a good actor like Shia Labeouf, it is a shame he was not given a better script and movie to be in. The problem with this is not the actors and actresses. It is this erroneously titled movie that should've been called "Communism-Lite Enters Italy and Padre Pio is Off in a Friary Somewhere." It is pretty much false advertising to title a film about a character who is in maybe 30% of the movie and has little to do with the rest of the story. Titling it "Padre Pio" would seemingly indicate biopic, but instead we are spending much of the movie with these other characters and political issues that seem like an underhanded push/propaganda for the director and writers' politics. It's like they used Padre Pio's name to attract an audience to watch another movie. I don't know if they did not have the budget to do a real movie about him, but feeling like a gypsy switch just took place when I'm staring at what feels like thinly disguised propaganda was something else. You will feel like you watched two short pieces that have been meshed together. This movie is an hour and forty-four minutes, so it doesn't have time for much. You will still feel empty as it goes into low-budget film school "trying to be arty" with handheld, grainy shots that linger on the same thing for far too long - almost as if they are deliberately stretching out a runtime. Right from the beginning with an overcast sky & sun, we get two exceedingly long shots of this. The second time around I was going "Okay, we got it. The sun is behind the clouds." Other shots that do not work were the spinning of the camera around a bell tower rope being pulled and the handheld closeups of a crucifix. It's a short feature already yet has filler disguised as supposedly interesting cinematography. I don't know, but I was like "Dude, I would've left that one out." I also think for fans of Padre Pio some of this probably comes across as pretty offensive. I don't know if Padre Pio flew off the handle in profanity spewing fits of rage at people, but he's certainly doing that in this movie.

The town parts, which is most of the movie, were just awful. Broken English, heavy accented English from everyone. Why not have them speaking Italian? It would have made it a lot better

But maybe only one star better. The town dialogue was boring and uninteresting and far from the way a regular person would speak. I did not care about any of the townspeople, they all could have died and I would have been happy to get back to the scenes of Pio which is the movie's topic.

I gave a star for Shia's performance as Padre Pio. Again the writing isn't there for it to be one of his best performances or anything, but it was the only enjoyable part of the movie.

I have a crazy idea why not put more Padre Pio scenes in a film about Padre Pio? Maybe they didn't think of that. Whole film could have been in the church instead and it would have been a solid 5/10.

So this has to be by far the most disappointing film I've seen in 2023. Why? I was so looking forward to this film for over a year before its release, expecting some semblance of a Padre Pio biopic. What I got instead? A completely different film whose plot involved the struggle of communists vs fascists in a small provincial Italian town, with Padre Pio being an incidental character who wasn't relevant to the plot AT ALL. In fact, had it not been for the last few seconds of the film's ending where they show him getting the stigmata, Padre Pio could have literally been interchanged with any generic provincial Italian friar. I'd even go a step further: if all his scenes were deleted from the film, it would not have changed the plot in the slightest whit. I would have at least been a bit more forgiving if they had taken 'artistic liberties' with telling Padre Pio's life, as some over-enthusiastic biopics tend to do.... but they didn't even do that! They do not discuss, flesh out, or even relay the tiniest iota of the story of Padre Pio... he is merely an incidental and inconsequential character in a story involving the early struggles of Italian partisans against the nascent fascists. I'm not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with that type of story (though truth be told, even that was bland and uninteresting), but if that was the main point and intent of the film, then the filmmakers should have been up front about it, and shouldn't have duped the audience by disguising this as having anything remotely to do with Padre Pio. Shame, as Padre Pio's story is fascinating on its own, and actually TELLING his story would have been immensely more interesting than this insipid drivel we were given here.