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"Those who seek justice fall prey to it."

Overwrought, overdirected and overly silly, The Reckoning is a bizarre period piece that wants to say something about how art plays a role in life. Like all films set in medieval times, it also throws some vague accusations at the Catholic Church and stars Paul Bettany who, to his credit, is invariably at home in the past, whether it be in 1380 England or at sea during the Napoleonic Wars. The typically imposing presence of Willem Dafoe and the sledgehammer visual emphasis employed by director Paul McGuigan may convince you that there is something going on here, but it's an illusion.

Nicholas (Paul Bettany), a village priest in the late 14th century, did a very bad thing. We know it is a very bad thing because a) the film is based on a novel called "Morality Play" and b) it is shown mostly in extreme slow motion and under bright lights. His indiscretion seems to be having steamy sex in a stable with another man's wife, and then getting caught doing so. After being chased out of his town, Nicholas runs around in the woods for a while before stumbling upon a traveling band of actors performing a mercy killing on one of their own. Though at first he is frightened by what looks like an act of murder, he soon decides that he wants to join them as they head to a nearby settlement to perform their versions of famous Biblical tales.

Turns out that the city they pick to stop in is about to hang a woman for luring a young boy off the main road and strangling him. She denies it, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Martin (Dafoe), the leader of the troupe, is disappointed by the lackluster audience showing for their recent Adam and Eve production, so he decides to do something radical: put on a play retelling the story of the boy's murder. To some, like the more traditional Tobias (Brian Cox), this is blasphemy, pure and simple -- "God didn't give us that story to use," he insists. But the notion gains a majority, so off they go, starting up an investigation and discovering some shocking (simply shocking!) things about the people in the town.

This is all well and good, but the movie is delusional. McGuigan deliver's the script's revelations with the weight of a falling piano, but the audience can only meet them with a shrug and a resounding "feh." The Reckoning is convinced it's rocking our world when in fact we're sitting there, tapping our feet, waiting for the film to get over it and get on with it. There are only so many slo-mo flashbacks to Nicholas' bad boy moment we can take.

The climax, which involves our intrepid players putting on a show to prove a point, approaches the sort of grand, everything-be-damned absurdity needed to pull off something that silly, but doesn't quite make it, choosing instead to hold on to its serious face. Unfortunately, it had already long lost the credibility it was trying to salvage. The last act also includes possibly the least developed villain in film history (played by Vincent Cassel) and the most absurd (and non sequitur) notion of sacrifice. What an awful mess.

The cast is strong (I wonder if that's actually Dafoe doing those contortions in the interludes; I suspect yes) and the movie isn't a complete waste. It just looks like an R.E.M. video and plays like a medieval soap opera. McGuigan has already completed Wicker Park with Josh Hartnett, and I hope that by then he had learned to keep the empty sensationalism depicted here in check... I don't know if my spleen can handle a Josh Hartnett vehicle done in this vein.