A press release from Maya Entertainment has revealed that writer/director Paul Schrader's **The Jesuit is finally underway. The thriller will mark the sixth time Willem Dafoe has worked with Schrader (seventh if you count The Last Temptation of Christ, which Schrader wrote but Martin Scorsese directed), and will co-star Michelle Rodriguez, Paz Vega (Sex and Lucia, The Spirit) and Manolo Cardona (Undertow).
The official synopsis describes a revenge thriller about a man with a violent past, released from prison in southern Texas to find that his wife has been murdered and his son kidnapped. Our hero "must abandon his dream of happiness in an explosive return to methods that made him the most feared man in Texas, and earned him the nickname... The Jesuit."
So far, so Steven Seagal, but we might have thought that from an early synopsis of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, and look what happened there. Schrader promises "a hard-edged revenge story", and we'll be intrigued to see how the Catholic thread that runs through his work from Taxi Driver to Dominion plays out here. We're guessing The Jesuit's "methods" don't involve ministering to the sick and the poor, or vows of chastity and obedience.
Shooting, if all goes to plan, starts in March 2011.