Little Italy, New York, the early 1990s. The city is in the grip of the mob, easy drugs and corruption. The whole city? Actually no, as the small parish of St Felicity, run by Father Joe (Kiefer Sutherland), is taking a stand against the temptation of the young. But it is not prayer that the priest turns to. The bullets that Father Joe uses to strike at the heart and mind are not words; they are literal gun bullets. For this former army man, a veteran of the Vietnam War who had to endure the drug-related death of his daughter, isn’t here to talk – he is here to get results.

This is the beginning of the amusing little B-movie Father Joe by Barthélémy Grossmann, which has screened out of competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. Grossmann himself may be offering up his debut here, but the name behind this crazy story is no unknown. The script was written by French legend Luc Besson, who has a track record of making French and Hollywood actors and actresses the next big action heroes. Sutherland may not need this boost, however. After all, his career was largely defined by the show 24 in the 2000s. But still, it must have been quite the treat to stand there, staring down at Michael Rispoli, one of the movie world’s go-to faces when it comes to mobsters, and say things like, “We can’t save everyone” when asked why Father Joe is okay with drugs still being sold to people aged 21 and up.

Rispoli, however, is just a henchman. The true kingpin is Al Pacino’s Giu, a cruel but cultured drug lord who reads Dante, considers himself above simple earthly pleasures and is overly attached to his dead mother. He’s a walking cliché, and Pacino smugly goes the whole hog with it. When he realises that his whole crime network has been paid a visit by Father Joe and his altar boys, who are themselves deadly killing machines, and forced not to sell to kids any more, he is of course furious. The youngsters are an important market. How dare this priest mess with his business?

Besson and Grossmann take the characters’ first confrontation in a confession booth as an opportunity to delve into the ways humans deal with loss, fear, anger and boredom. They are in the same business, Giu tells Father Joe. The priest sells hope to lost souls, while he sells them alcohol and narcotics. But before the final showdown, Father Joe, his altar boys and former drug addict Felicity (Ever Anderson, the daughter of Besson’s ex Milla Jovovich) go on a side quest, which is equally gory, brutal and crammed with gun fetishes, but feels a bit crowbarred in. It’s almost like a second movie they were afraid would never get made.

Amid all that high-octane violence and soul-searching, as well as the amusing, world-peace-promoting interfaith team-ups involving the religious communities in multicultural New York, Besson still knows how to write a zinger or two. The movie may take itself too seriously too often, but it is a far cry from the pompous oeuvre of his later career. Grossmann proves that he has a knack for staging action scenes, while also never losing sight of the characters at the centre. Some more camp would have been nice. But given the extended lives of Taxi and The Transporter, this may not be the last we see of Father Joe.

Father Joe was produced by France’s LBP and EuropaCorp, and is sold internationally by Kinology.