FILM REVIEW : ‘First Power’ Has Blood and Flesh--but Lacks Spirit

As a director, Robert Resnikoff, in his debut feature “The First Power” (citywide), reveals a dynamic flair for action. As a writer, he’s hard put to justify all the extreme violence he works up.

In this sleek but grisly and far-fetched thriller of the supernatural, he means to terrify us but winds up leaving us merely numb, the usual effect of contrived exploitation fare.

A hotshot LAPD homicide detective (Lou Diamond Phillips) at last captures an elusive serial killer (Jeff Kober), who is executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber. Unfortunately, he’s no ordinary killer but a disciple of Satan, whose evil spirit is now freed from his own corpse to inhabit the bodies of others at will. In short, the challenge facing the detective is now infinitely greater, but he soon has the help of a beautiful psychic (Tracy Griffith).

Resnikoff, a USC cinema alumnus, makes things difficult for himself by bringing in a friend of the psychic. She’s a nun (Elizabeth Arlen) who not only senses the true nature of the killer, asserting that he is possessed of the “first power,” which is resurrection, but also knows what must be done to try to stop him. However, she is ordered to lay off by her superiors, who fear that if there is a glitch the result would be bad publicity for the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, it is all too predictable that the nun is eventually going to defy her superiors and risk everything to help stop this superhuman evil entity. Resnikoff therefore seems merely to be marking time, cramming in as much violence as possible until he’s ready for the nun to reappear at the picture’s spectacular, though drawn out, climax. For all its purported concern for spirituality, “The First Power” (rated R) is a hollow, bone-crunching, blood-spattered business.

‘THE FIRST POWER’

An Orion Pictures release of a Nelson Entertainment presentation of an Interscope Communications production. Executive producers Ted Field, Robert W. Cort, Melinda Jason. Producer David Madden. Writer-director Robert Resnikoff. Camera Theo Van Sande. Music Stewart Copeland. Production designer Joseph T. Garritz. Costumes Tim D’Arcy. Associate producer Marilyn Vance-Straker. 2nd-unit camera Jesus Elizondo, Michael Todd Henry. Stunt coordinator John Moio. Film editor Michael Bloecher. With Lou Diamond Phillips, Tracy Griffith, Jeff Kober, Mykel T. Williamson, Elizabeth Arlen, Dennis Lipscomb, Carmen Argenziano, Julianna McCarthy, Nada Despotovich, Sue Giosa.

Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).