The short version of the plot is that a police officer of broken faith is conscripted by the armies of Heaven to join the fight against Satan. It wouldn’t be sporting to share the long version. Suffice to say that it includes a long-lost biblical prophecy hidden in a Seattle public library (because, as one character puts it, a library is the one place nobody would think to look for a book), a peace activist who is the last man on Earth trying to inspire Christian faith, old people nearly hitting an angel with their car, demons with red contacts, angels with day-glo contacts, and a whole lot of swords. There’s a bit in there about the impending war between Heaven and Hell, and Gyeney has been free with his desire to remake the film, on a larger budget, as the first entry in a trilogy.
Far be it from me to fault a new filmmaker for having outsized ambitions. We could do with more of that in “real” movies, frankly, and while I’m not particularly disposed to like much about the movie’s overriding theme – that the world is doomed if we don’t whip up a lot more religious folk – but its energy is indisputable and deeply agreeable. That goes not just for Gyeney and his multiple hats, but for most of the cast as well, who all seem at least a little bit aware that their scenario is just goofy enough that it requires a wink rather than stentorian line delivery.
That kind of enthusiasm is more than enough to obliterate any theoretical problems of having a low budget, and Gyeney proves himself to be perfectly adept at figuring out how to best spread the small number of dollars he has lying around. We see it in cheeky moments like a quick, Raimi-inflected zoom towards a character, leading to a new shot where that character has been slashed and splattered with surprisingly good-looking blood (he is indeed cut during the cut, if you will. What we’re seeing is somebody not giving a damn that he’s not supposed to be able to do certain things given his production scale. Maybe that’s not quite the same thing as making a great movie, but it’s arguably better; I’d much rather watch a movie made by people who remember the simple, elemental fact that filmmaking is supposed to be fun, than a grimly competent film-by-committee. Gyeney clearly remembers that filmmaking is supposed to be fun, and the movie he has thereby produced is quite a lot of fun on its own.