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The Order

The Order

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Order- Well Atleast It's Different
Review: The Order, starring australian heart throb Heath Ledger was not at all what I expected. It surely was creative and different and actually could be called original, but it had its problems. The film's premise is nothing short of confusing and complex, it does make you think but not in a good way, you only can wonder what the heck this movie is about? Oh well here goes:
Heath Ledger plays a priest named Alex Bernierwho is part of an order. He soon learns that the head of the order has been murdered by an entity named the Sin Eater. Bernier goes to Rome to investigate. The movie does have some nice CGI, as well as Ledger in a more dramatic role and shows that he can actually act. Writer/Producer/Director Brian Hegelend who made A Knight's Tale and worked with Ledger is apparently struggling to make a good movie. Though this film isn't horrible, it's definetly worth waiting for hitting the shelves at Blockbuster. Also the some of the cast from A Knight's Tale are in The Order including Shannyn Sossamon and Mark Addy. Though the film has the potential to be an initially intriguing thriller it mostly fails. Though the films does have a few scary moments but stick with good horror, religious classics such as The Excorcist and The Omen. Even if you're only into this one for Heath, it's not really worth it. Stick to his better and more understandable work such as The Four Feathers and A Knight's Tale.
The Order is rated R for Violent Images, Sexuality and Language. The film does have some intense images including some bloody images and stabbings. The sexuality is mild, mainly one breif scene of intimacy not really hardcore or explicit. Language is reasonably brief. Take a change seeing it, if you must.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Darker Side of Light
Review: I thought this movie was well written, acted and directed. It leaves me wanting more.
At first, the movie introduces itself in a ghostly fashion. It seems it may be about exorcisms and priests who are affected by the job. (Though you quickly find out otherwise.) The stage is set in Rome. Everything about the setting is old. The city, the cemetaries and it's ghosts, the churches and it's surroundings (and many of the people) are all from a different era or believe they are.
The story is sewn in to the fabric of my subconcious. It allows me to laugh with Mark Addy, the actor who plays the helpful, friendly and just a little bit selfless priest who seems committed to fighting evil. Heath Ledger is his friend whose cause lies in finding the truth about what happened to his surrogate father, priest friend, Dominic. It appears that the truth is deadly and very, very scary. And yet we watch and wait.....for more.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Father Alex kills the Sin eater and takes his place
Review: At the end of the movie, Father Alex (Heath Ledger) BECOMES the Sin Eater! What a surprise!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Send this Order Back!
Review: I've always been fascinated with films dealing with catholic mythology and demonology and the like so I gave this one a try. Heath Ledger is a priest who is a member of a rare order of priests who "battle demons and the undead" Unfortunately, they do basically none of that in this movie.

Ledger is told by his cardinal (played by Peter Weller) that his mentor, Father Dominick has died in Rome and Ledger immediately flies there. There he finds that Dominick is not to have a Catholic burial because he committed suicide which Alex (ledger) doubts. Doesn't matter...he was excommunicated. Thank's for telling us that in the first place.

Alex finds evidence that Dominick was killed by a "sin-eater" a priest that can suck out a person's sins and allow them passage to Heaven. Of course this also kills the person.

They are told by Weller that they need to find the sin-eater and kill him and Weller gives them an ancient dagger to do the job that looks like it was bought at the local dollar store.

OK so far but then it just disinigrates into a morass of undeveloped plot lines. For the first 1/2 of the movie there are a pair of demonic children who turn up to provide the movie's only creepy segments. They attack Alex when he is burying father Dominick. But then they kind of disappear and nothing is explained as to what they are or why they attack.

Alex and Tom go to some strange nightclub and are led by a bald woman in an evening dress to see a mysterious figure in black robes who apparently leads some sort of religuous cult. No..it too is never explained who they are.

Upon leaving, Tom is attacked by demonic forces seemingly for no other reason than to get him out of the way so Alex can now interract with the sin-eater.

By this time, if you are still awake from this monumental snore-fest, you are praying that it will be over soon. The ending, with the revealing of the leader of that mysterious cult is in no way shocking as there were very few candidates to choose from.

In the end you're asking yourself, okay, is that it? What just happened?

Beats me...a boring confusing mess.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A Fate Worse Than Death
Review: Writer/director Brian Helgeland and actor Heath Ledger, first teamed up for the enjoyable mideval romp, A Knight's Tale. For their second film together, called The Order, things get a whole lot darker and much less enjoyable.

Father Alex Bernier (Ledger) is a conflicted, rather rebellious priest, who is asked to travel to Rome to investigate the strange death of his mentor. The young priest's investigation leads him to suspect that the death was the work of the Sin Eater, an ancient figure who plays God on earth by absolving the unforgivable sins outside the Church, allowing great evil to go unpunished.

Designed as a thriller, The Order sets up more like the Bible, written in Latin, that you, as the viewer, have to translate in order to understand what's going on. It's a shame that the movie is all atmosphere and no substance. Not even the casting of Peter Weller, who's always good--even if the film is not, can save the movie. Many other faces from A Knights Tale are back, making the film seem like it has potential, but that strategy falls flat too. The thrills and chills are few and far between. I was bored folks.

The audio commentary from Helgeland is ok for what it's worth. But it's hard to relish the making of stuff as much, if the film is sub-par, at best. The DVD extras also include a series of "unrated" deleted scenes that wouldn't have made a difference, if they made it in the final cut. You can also watch a series of dailies, or rough footage, as well. Both the deleted scenes and the dailies are fashioned with optional director's commentary. The theatrical trailer tops off the bonus material on the disc. If you do decide to watch The Order at all, you can do so, in either the full-screen or widescreen formats.

My suggestion: Order up A Knights Tale instead of this rag-tag disappointment.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An actually interesting movie.
Review: Most people did not like this movie, well I understand why. This movie is a bit complecated and artsy so to say :P, but i understood it as a movie in witch you were not supposed to really be scared but instead you should put your self in the shoes of the characters and try to see the world the way they do. Good and Evil nothing more then a bar like place were demons and priests fight, priests with there power of exorcism, and demons with there demonic powers. Its a weird flick ill say that. VERY WEIRD, but i cant deny i dug it.....i mean if you look at it.....in this world of demons vs priests you could say the Sin Eater was like the inbetween guy someone who played outside of the rules, and yet was interesting in the reason for what he did. Nothing more then a man who wants to give redemption for those who cant get it anywere else, In the movie its not Gods fault good people go to hell but its the fault of the church that is not perfect so you could say the sin eater was a fale safe kind of thing for the world.......ok im done sounding like a moron thanks :P

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great movie, a sequal or a book would be nice.
Review: First, if you are uninterested in religion as a background for a movie you would not enjoy this movie. That is the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. With that said, you do not have to be religious to like this movie. I am not religious, but I loved the movie because I enjoy movies if they are well made with a setting of religion in the background. I would classify this movie more of a mystery/conspiricy than horror. The actors play this movie wonderfully, and the settings look like they are on site, not some hollywood studio. The only complaint would be that there is much more traffic/people in Rome in real life. Other than that, is was visually enjoyable.
The story itself has more than one twist and turn. All of which gave you a sense of learning from the start of the moive. It gave you a feel like you were part of the inside of the catholic machine, not a viewer from the outside. This was really well done. I highly reccomend this film. I wish there was a book to this to go even more indepth, or a line of sequals to it. Sorry if this review was a bit general, but that was on purpose to avoid any spoilers for those who have not watched it yet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A very dark and supernatural thriller.
Review: I bought this DVD about seven months ago along with AMADEUS. I watched it with my dad alost three time I think it was. The thing is that we liked it very much. A great supernatural thriller with a great cast and performances. To be honest, by the theatrical trailer I've seen on the movies, I thought this was going to be very scary like THE SIXTH SENSE. But even though it didn't freak me out, I enjoyed it. There are very strange dialogues int the movie. There is very little action and horror, but very interesting overall. I suggest you rent it so you could watch a great thriller (not horror) movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: All Frocked up with Nowhere to Go
Review: Brian Helgeland's demonic-goings-on-in-the-Vatican flick "The Order" is what would happen if you were to remake "The Exorcist", turn the FUN knob down to "ZERO", and rip it off.

It looks great, with its twisting Roman alleyways and underground Goth clubs and marbled Vatican antechambers. And while tormented priest-hero Father Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger) may be wrestling with maladies of the mind, body, and soul, he still manages to look like he just sauntered off a GQ cover shoot.

What about the story itself? At the guts of "The Order" is the millennial-old tale of the Sin Eater, a being who takes upon himself the unconfessed sins of the dying, a kind of moral Vampire who is roaming, and killing, in modern day Rome.

Creepy, scary, nasty stuff, right?

Wrong. "The Order" started off smart, creepy and tight, but by the time the final credits rolled I looked worse than Linda Blair in the middle of her spider-climb.

It's a stylish film, certainly: Director of Photography Nicola Pecorini has an eye for visual detail and wields a mean camera. The opening sequence---an elderly priest cycling over an ancient Roman bridge to a dissolute, desolate, demonic rendezvous---is very creepy. "The Order" has all the physical trappings of a classic: terror amid claustrophobic Roman alleyways, a wickedly pagan catacomb underground, corridors of power within the secretive Vatican, a forsaken Italian graveyard. And the actors summoned up give their all: Heath Ledger delivers as the jaded, faded, disillusioned Father Bernier; Benno Furman does what he has to do as Bill Eden; Mark Addy shines as the earthy, bawdy monk Thomas Garrett; Peter Weller has fun as the nefarious Driscoll.

But it's all in vain: all the tricky camera shots and heartfelt acting can't exorcise this monster. "The Order" is one of those weird, affectless flicks where the whole is distinctly less than the sum of the parts. The underworld teeming beneath the vaults of Rome is fascinating, as is the mummery of the hanged man: all of this hints at deeper, darker mysteries to be plumbed, and cinematographer Nicola Pecorini employs the trippy camera-work that made the wigged-out "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" even trippier.

It works here and there: the confrontation in a Roman graveyard with the diabolic is shivery, narcotic, effective. But Pecorini sinks beneath the dead weight of Helgeland's plodding, paint-by-numbers direction and the tedious script. The only thing "The Order" exorcised me of was about 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

"The Order" had potential but was served up dead on arrival. Let's bury it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: An Order For Morons
Review: This film had the possibility to at least entertain but instead it tanked into a boring formula vampire film. I wouldn't even suggest looking at this on a Sunday night when there is nothing else on TV, its that bad. It concerns a priest (Ledger in a miscast role) and his attempt to find out about a "sin eater" played by a German actor who was in a few German hits who can't speak English and he's dull and boring. There is no emotional response in the film, it does nothing at all. ....




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