Review from the Omaha World Herald

By Bob Fischbach, September 18, 2009

Priest’s search unearths a rich story

Take it from a guy who’s seen more than a few. Rarely will you find a movie with a budget well under $1 million that delivers you from evil as smoothly as “Into Temptation.”

Screenwriter-director Patrick Coyle’s movie follows the dilemma of an inner-city parish priest who must find a prostitute.

For all the right reasons.

In the confessional, call girl Linda Salerno tells Father John that she wants to confess a sin she hasn’t committed yet.

“I’m going to commit suicide. On my next birthday. And I’m an Aries, Father, so there’s not much time.”

Then she flees.

Haunted by her plight but hobbled because, under church law, he cannot reveal what was said in the confessional, Father John sets out on an odyssey of bars, porn shops and late-night street corners to find the woman.

In his search, he enlists the help of some colorful characters, including an earthy cabdriver, a savvy librarian, some ladies of the evening, a street person and even a scary pimp.

What will the archbishop think?

The cinematography is sharp, the editing crisp, the acting uniformly good. It helps that Jeremy Sisto (“Six Feet Under,” “Waitress”) plays the priest, Kristin Chenoweth (“Wicked,” “Pushing Daisies”) is the prostitute, and Brian Baumgartner (“The Office”) is another priest (in an affluent parish), who happens to be Father John’s friend and mentor.

That’s amazing casting on a tiny budget.

Even small supporting roles are deftly handled. It’s fun to see Linda Kelsey (“Lou Grant”) in a cameo as Father John’s mother, while Tom Carey is effective as Linda’s sexually abusive older relative. Amy Matthews provides an interesting plot wrinkle as Father John’s ex-girlfriend, who flirts up a storm after having ended her marriage. Coyle, an Omaha native, is just right as one of Linda’s johns.

Best of all, the writing is anchored in reality (sexual themes and images earn an R rating). Coyle lets his movie show rather than tell, and lets viewers reach their own conclusions.

Early on, Father John’s daily life is telescoped into a series of quick vignettes in which he appears at a hospital bedside, in the pulpit (his jokes bounce off expressionless faces), at a meeting of the rosary sodality. He’s pragmatic, rather than dogmatic, in his advice to a young mother angry at the church, a husband struggling with his marriage, a young man who is gay.

“Into Temptation” weaves all this into the fabric of a community, how lives intersect in ways both seen and unseen.

In the end, the movie becomes as much a search for the good in people and for faith as it is for Linda.

Playing the opposite of her usual bubbly sidekick, Chenoweth logs some decent dramatic moments. Baumgartner is droll as a venal, overweight smoker as he cautions Father John: “Don’t cross the line. And when you do, call me.”

But Sisto is the heart and soul of the movie, and it’s worth the ticket price just to watch him on his journey of the soul.

This is one I’d pay to see twice.

Back to INTO TEMPTATION