The Pope's Exorcist

 Russel Crowe is... The Pope's Exorcist. He unfortunately doesn't (spoiler alert!) exorcise the pope (Franco Nero!) at any point though, it's more that he's all buddy-buddy with the Pope and has his Holiness run some background investigation for him at one point, like the stereotypical nerdy sidekick that does all the homework for the hero. That's pretty badass, too, though they don't have the pope hacking anything which seems like a missed opportunity.

 Crowe plays a character loosely based on real-life figure Aman Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist from 1986 to his death a few years ago. From the little I've read, it's.... a very loose likeness. The film's plot is even more liberal in its relationship with (purported) fact.

The exorcist vs. Saruman

 Crowe's interpretation of Gabriele is actually one of the main draws of the movie; He uses his considerable charisma to portray an avuncular, self deprecating fella who suffers no fools (as shown by an undercooked subplot about ecclesiastical power games) but also possesses an interminable supply of compassion. It's a good character, always fun to watch bounce off situations and other people.

 Demons are real, Catholicism and the church are (overall, at least) forces for good, and treating scripture or superstition as anything but literal, manifest truth is a mortal risk to both body and soul; Satan is real, y'all! You may or may not agree with any of this, but it's required buy-in to enjoy this sort of thing, so there you go. And to be fair to the movie (and to real-life father Amorth) they do allow that actual supernatural possessions are vanishingly rare, mostly they all have rational, usually psychological explanations.

 Father Amorth is sent to Spain to look into the case of one Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), a young kid taken over a powerful demon while his American expat family was trying to refurbish an abandoned abbey of which the Pope himself warns "has given us trouble before." It turns out that the site hides a (literal!) torture basement with ancient buried secrets, secrets that could shake the very foundations of Christendom, yadda yadda.

 With the stakes duly set Father Amorth and a local priest (Daniel Zovatto, playing the requisite rookie) carry on with their exorcisms and investigations. Cue all the subgenre-appropriate trappings: telekinetic manhandling, regurgitation of unlikely (but oh so symbolic) objects, demonic mind games, etc. If you, like me, find a little kid saying inappropriate things with a cookie monster voice more funny than scary... well, prepare to not be scared. It's all slightly more over the top than your usual possession movie but sadly not nearly enough to make it really stand out.

 What we end up with is yet another religious possession movie where the possessed says something hurtful and the good guys pray at it harder. Rinse and repeat; it's really, really hard to make this sort of thing interesting at this point, and despite its best attempts The Pope's Exorcist doesn't really succeed at it. A tragic backstory for Father Amorth frankly makes it seem even more by the numbers.
 The demon's motives are a bit more convoluted than usual, but like the political games back in Rome the conspiracy side of things feels like a bit of a letdown. Darker, and much more recent secrets have been aired about the Catholic church, but the movie only alludes to them - one gets the feeling that the script doesn't really want to cast too much shade on the Good Guys.

 Julius Avery is a good craftsman, and the film looks pretty great (cinematographer: Khalid Mohtaseb). Maybe a bit too reliant on those two most famous of complementary colours, teal and orange, but hey, it works. The pacing is strong, the sets are very nice, and the actors are all game. It's not a great movie - I'm not sure you could make a good traditional possession movie without some heavy retooling, something which this movie is completely uninterested in doing - but it is entertaining for what it is.