‘The Pope’s Exorcist’ Review: A Terrific Russell Crowe Battles Demons In Movie Possessed By The Memory Of A Certain 50-Year-Old Horror Classic

deadline.com:

It is hard to look at any movie with “Exorcist” in its title and not immediately think of William Friedkin’s eternal 1973 Oscar-winning horror classic that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Nevertheless there have been dozens of films of various stripes that have tried to conjure their own magic in this sub-genre, but none that have managed to surpass what Friedkin and screenwriter William Peter Blatty did with that brilliant film.

Now though, with a bit of a twist we have a new entry, The Pope’s Exorcist, which is hoping to lure audiences with the promise of the story of an actual exorcist — and not just any run-of-the-mill demon slayer but rather Father Gabriele Amorth, who for 36 years plied his trade at the Vatican, rising to chief exorcist there in 1992 until his death in 2016.

Along the way he wrote books, “good ones” as this film notes, An Exorcist Tells His Stories and An Exorcist: More Stories, that were acquired as the basis for the screenplay of the film that also had the good sense to cast Russell Crowe in a witty, colorful and determined portrait of Amorth, who shared many different aspects and stories of his “exorcisms.” Lest you think this is a biopic with an emphasis on actual events, think again, or just stay until the end-credit roll is over to find out “this is a work of fiction” featuring characters with no resemblance to any living or dead person.