Russell Crowe at beer-and-popcorn Vatican screening of new film

VATICAN CITY, Oct 17 (Reuters) – The Vatican handled new recruits of its police pressure and Swiss Guard to beer and popcorn at a particular screening of the brand new movie “The Best Beer Run Ever” on Monday, topped off by a gathering with one in every of its stars – Russell Crowe.

Crowe, in Italy for the Rome Movie Pageant, dropped into the Vatican’s small projection room – which seats solely about 50 individuals – to greet the viewers between two back-to-back screenings.

The movie is ready in New York Metropolis and Vietnam in 1967 and relies on the true story of John “Chickie” Donahue, who introduced cans of beer from the neighbourhood watering gap to Vietnam to raise the spirit of associates combating there.

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Donahue is performed by Zac Efron and Crowe performs hardened and hard-drinking warfare photographer Arthur Coates. Invoice Murray performs a crotchety and super-patriotic World Warfare Two veteran who runs the bar in Manhattan’s Inwood neighbourhood.

The Vatican occasion was organised by Father Andrew Small, an official on the Vatican’s Fee for the Safety of Minors, who has a cameo look enjoying a neighbourhood parish priest.

“I simply really feel a kinship with the lads right here within the Vatican who’re defending us and I believed that inviting them and associates to a film is what you do whenever you wish to be pleasant,” Small mentioned.

Reuters spoke to some recruits who loved the movie, a comedy-drama whose backdrop is how the warfare deeply divided American households, consuming buddies and society at giant.

Within the movie Donahue additionally carried a rosary from a neighbourhood mom to provide to her son in Vietnam however he was killed earlier than Donahue may discover him.

Whereas the movie was being projected on Monday, Small went to Pope Francis’ close by residence and the pope blessed a number of dozen rosaries that got to these on the screening.

Crowe later toured St. Peter’s Basilica and was given a uncommon, close-up take a look at Michelangelo’s Pieta, allowed to go behind the bulletproof glass that seals off a facet chapel the place it’s on show.