Movie Review: 'The Man from Rome'

The Man from Rome (2023)

Directed by Sergio Dow

Written by Adrian Bol, Beth Bollinger, Gretchen Cowan

Starring Richard Armitage, Amaia Salamanca, Paul Guilfoyle

Release Date June 29th, 2023

Published June 26th, 2023

I knew I was in for an unintentional laugh riot in The Man from Rome when a very early scene featured a hacking of the Vatican. Now, I am sure the Vatican probably does have a modern infrastructure with a secure network and so on. They may even have a database that they would prefer not to have being hacked. That said, the scene is framed like every movie hacking scene ever. It's as if The Vatican morphs into FBI headquarters and a discount Ethan Hunt's computer guy in Mission Impossible were tip tapping away to get into the FBI database. As staged, it's just so silly to see Vatican security trying to battle a hacker.

The hacker succeeds in getting through Vatican security via the power of movie level typing. What was the hacker doing? They were hacking the Pope's personal laptop. I love the idea of the Pope lying in bed late at night watching Netflix and he gets hacked. The film does show the Pope on his laptop in bed and the sight is wonderfully incongruous. Again, I'm sure The Pope is as modern as any other Boomer, but it doesn't stop the sight of him in bed with a laptop from causing me breaking out into giggles at how it looks.

The hacker has some information about a business deal and a haunted church in Seville, Spain that is killing people. The hacker believes that someone in the Vatican is helping the business deal to tear down the church to go through and they don't trust that anyone would get this information to The Pope. So, they have to hack the Vatican. For his part, The Pope, played by Franco Nero, is easily convinced that something strange is afoot. He immediately assigns a top Vatican investigator to the case, Father Quart (Richard Armitage).

In another example of how delightfully, unintentionally silly The Man from Rome is, Father Quart arrives in Seville and has a deeply awkward and stilted conversation with a local detective. The detective, in explaining to us just how good Father Quart is as an investigator, says "If you ever decide to turn in that collar for a badge and a gun, you know where to find me." In this universe, Vatican higher ups are just like cops. The cop movie tropes don't stop there as the rest of the movie plays out like a modern cop movie investigation with guns and murder attempts and duplicitous, corrupt businessmen.

The Vatican being portrayed like a Police Precinct in an 80s cop movie is perhaps the most unexpected trend of 2023. The thriller, The Pope's Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe, had the same vibe, right down to Crowe's priest nearly being asked to turn in his holy water and collar over his above the law approach to exorcism. And, in a strange coincidence that could mean these movies exist in the same weird universe, The Pope in The Pope's Exorcist and in The Man from Rome is played by the same actor, Italian legend Franco Nero.

Nero is the seen it all, I'm too old for this s### Pope of your cop movie dreams. He never gets the chance to demand that Richard Armitage turn in his badge and gun, but in The Pope's Exorcist, he does act as Russell Crowe's 'man in the chair,' sending him vital information for his case exactly when he needs it. The Pope in The Man from Rome is mostly just there to kick things into gear and then take a back seat for the rest of the less than thrilling action.

I mentioned that there is a killer church in The Man from Rome. Several locals from Seville believe the church is haunted as at least 3 people have inexplicably died inside the church ever since renovations of the church began. The church is at the center of a bitter divorce between a woman of privilege and her weaselly husband who wants to tear it down and develop it with the backing of his secret Vatican insider. His wife is opposed to tearing down the church and has financed the restoration of the church.

That's the actual story of The Man from Rome, a battle over real estate. The murders? They were all incidental. Sorry, spoiler alert, but no joke, the murders were not intended. They were each explained away as accidents or unintended murders. One character, a previous Vatican investigator, died because someone just wanted to scare him out of the church. His death was a whoopsie. The other two deaths have similar explanations and that the entire thriller element of The Man from Rome is hand waved at the end in favor of a corrupt real estate deal is very funny to me.

The Man from Rome is a laughably bad thriller. Why filmmakers are turning the Vatican into a Police Precinct, complete with detectives, departments, and cases assigned to detectives, is a truly baffling choice. It's a very funny choice but it is not a choice that is intended to be funny. The Franco Nero as The Pope trope is also interesting. Nero apparently filmed this movie first and then made The Pope's Exorcist and it seems that these movies are not intended to be related in any way. The Pope's Exorcist is set in the 1980s while this film is set in 2023. It's possible that he could be the same character but that he's playing the same age in both movies seems to poo poo that theory.

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I couldn't resist adding more Priest/Cop jokes....

Priest/Cop: Only God is Above the Law

Priest/Cop: Old Testament, New Cop

Priest/Cop: Blessed Be Thy Bullets

Leave your best Priest/Cop puns in the comments. :)