Review of The Rosary Murders

Whatever considerations you may have about Donald Sutherland and his many arguable roles of all sorts, from the bottom and up at least half way, but he was never in a bad film, and his roles were never without depth. Here he is a Catholic priest whose Catholic community in Detroit suffers from a serial killer, murdering only devoted Catholics, even priests and nuns, and suddenly one day Donald Sutherland as father Koesler finds the murderer in his confessional. It's a great set-up, like in Hitchcock's "I Confess" with the same extremely difficult dilemma: should the priest break the seal of the confession to save lives or just let the murderer go on killing innocent victims after absolution? Donald Sutherland can't just do nothing, so he investigates the case and learns the whole story, the murderer's very difficult case of having lost his only daughter at the age of 16 by suicide, while Donald of course can't understand why the killer blames the church for this. So he continues delving into the case, and in the end all the facts are clear, everything makes sense, and the murderer makes his final bow without Donald having had to break the seal. It's a labyrinth of matters of conscience, and the Catholic Church is very much put on trial, especially in view of the global scandals of the last 15 years. If you are a Catholic, you will find the film utterly interesting and engrossing, and if you are not you might understand it anyway.