Local parson Paul Bettany is full of impassioned rhetoric when he speaks to his 14th-century congregation, but as The Reckoning begins, it looks like a sure bet that he'll be out of the pulpit before long. The look in his eyes suggests that he believes what he says about the perils of earthly temptation, but his glances at the comelier members of his flock as he says it—and their glances at him—make it clear that he knows temptation all too well. Before long, he's cutting his hair and hitting the road, but while his familiarity with sin makes him a less-than-perfect priest, it also makes him uniquely qualified to try his hand at both acting and sleuthing. Hooking up with an impoverished theatrical troupe led by Willem Dafoe, he fills in the bit parts during an unexpected stop, helping eke out a few shillings to repair a wagon wheel by staging the story of creation. Distracted by the recent murder of a local boy, the townspeople want nothing to do with the play, which gives Dafoe and Bettany an idea. Motivated in equal parts by artistic inspiration, financial need, and a desire for justice, they break with period traditions by staging an original work, retelling the story of the boy's murder to catch the conscience of the town. Directed by Paul McGuigan from Mark Mills' adaptation of Barry Unsworth's novel Morality Play, The Reckoning has a slick look, a great cast (filled out by Brian Cox and Vincent Cassel), and a watertight conceptual framework that pairs the symbolically loaded medieval-mystery form of The Name Of The Rose with an unwavering faith in art's power to force social change. If only The Reckoning weren't so maddeningly dull. It works on the cerebrum while the rest of the body drifts off to sleep, and the dullness only intensifies as the film goes on, growing talkier as it approaches the end of the mystery, like some medieval flashback on an old episode of Father Dowling Mysteries. Viewers who like to avoid both foreshadowing and heavy-handed symbolism take note: Ignore the suspicious man looking down on the action from the castle on high.