Deliver Us From Evil

So the Catholic hierarchy is in deep denial about sex in all its aspects, closes ranks against outsiders as much as the Mafia, and maintains corporate lies like a spiritual Enron? Well, yeah. Did you ever doubt it? So Amy Berg’s documentary is hardly breaking news, after endless pedophile and sexual abuse scandals among the priesthood over the last decade or more. And except for a few deeply incisive moments, the film does not tell anything one didn’t know about perpetrators and victims. Nonetheless the subject is important and the film is well-made, even if the situations are a bit manufactured and the case closed before the film begins to roll. The reality is chilling, and needs to be aired, but the film preaches to the converted rather than revealing hidden depths in the subject. There’s no psychological mystery to be unraveled, as in Capturing the Friedmans, from the other side of a similar issue. (2006, Images, n.) *7* (MC-86.)