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After reading numerous critics' reviews of this movie, I went in with the lowest of expectations. In fact, if not for the insistence of my wife, I wouldn't have even bothered checking it out. I admit to being pleasantly surprised. I'd give it a solid 3.5 stars.

This movie delves into the dark side of the Catholic church. Peter Weller is delightfully evil as the "dark pope." Heath Ledger is solid as always. Jon Laurimore turns in a solid, awesome performance as the "Sin Eater", and Shannyn Sassamon gives the only questionable performance. I just couldn't figure out if she was trying to really get into her mentally disturbed character, or if she was too sleepy to really care.

As for the story, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The pacing was great for me. This is not an in your face, gross out, thrill a minute, jump out of your seat movie. It gets under your skin, and deep in the dark recesses of your mind. It's creepy and disturbing.

The movie highlights some fallacies within the beliefs and hiearchy of Catholicism. It is a dark fantasy, and should be accepted as such. If you aren't certain about it, wait for the DVD, but one way or the other, I think you'll enjoy it.

Alex (Heath Ledger) a rebellious priest from a disappearing fringe of Catholicism goes to Rome to determine the cause of the mysterious death of Dominic, his excommunicated mentor. He is accompanied in his quest by Mara (Shannyn Sossamon), a troubled love who just escaped an institution for the mentally ill and by Thomas (Mark Addy), the other living priest of his church. Together and with the help of a Cardinal (Peter Weller) and a murky and devious character named Chirac, he discovers that a Sin Eater, a person capable of absorbing someone else's sins thus granting them entry to the kingdom of Heaven over God's back, was behind the death of Dominic. When the church refuses Dominic a burial in holy ground, Alex, who is supposed to kill the Sin Eater under the Cardinal's suggestion, is instead lured by him to find the truth and understand the meaning of what he does. Then the conflict between Alex's beliefs and desires begins.
This movie has a well-assembled cast (some returning actors from Brian Helgeland's previous movie A Knight's Tale) and great acting throughout, specially from Ledger and Weller. It has a tight-written, coherent script with wonderful character interactions, great moody music and very-well placed and never overdone special effects. The best thing this movie offers though, is a subconscious lingering question about the darkness that surrounds us, be it as sin, demons, or other supernatural beings. In this regard this movie is more suspenseful and scarier than the best of horror movies.
Watch it, pay attention and enjoy.
--Reviewed by M. E. Volmar

A thought provoking and entertaining film with lots of imagery and some jump out of your seats moments. Not an action thrill ride but not slow moving either. Would certainly make people uncomfortable if they devoutly believed all church teachings.
The story was well acted and Heath Ledger especially gave a mature and "old soul," feel to his approach.

I enjoy intelligent thrillers, even those that move forward slowly and carefully. For example, I thought "The Game" with Michael Douglas was one of the best of this type of movie. I thought this movie had the potential of being in the same class as "The Game," but I was disappointed.

Part of the problem is the story itself. Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger) is a young priest investigating the apparent suicide of his mentor. It is important to the story to realize that all the principal characters are Catholic. While suicide is a sin in all religions, in the Catholic faith it is perhaps the worst sin of all because it can never be forgiven and prevents that person from being buried in hallowed ground. Alex struggles to believe that his mentor could have committed suicide and sets out to understand why or to prove that he did not commit suicide.

The movie plods along, paced by Alex's thoughts and his interaction with William Eden (Benno Fürmann) and Mara Sinclair (Shannyn Sossamon), along with several other characters, including Peter Weller in one his most unusual roles. The problem with the pacing is that the core issues in this movie are the shock of "sin eating," a pagan practice that dates back hundreds of years, and corruption with the church. Perhaps Catholics might be shocked that sin eating might still exist, but Protestants are going to yawn and say "so what?" Further, with the significant on-going publicity regarding a variety of crimes committed by various priests and the ensuing cover up by the Catholic Church, political corruption within the Church and the possibility that some of the most important members of the church might be other than they seem just isn't all that shocking. This movie should have been made twenty years ago when it might have had more of an effect.

The actors here are not at fault. The acting throughout is quite good. I was very impressed by all the principal characters, especially by Heath Ledger, who did an excellent job. Shannyn Sossaman as his conflicted love interest was dark, brooding, very sensual and sexual and yet also very innocent; outstanding acting. The cinematography was similarly excellent and enhanced the subject quite well. The problem with the movie is that the central conflict will have little effect on many people, and thus they will lose interest and not want to spend the effort to focus on the complex, philosophical story line.

Perhaps Brian Helgeland could have made this movie a different way or with a different script and achieved the effect he was hoping to create. Instead the movie spends far too much time on religious philosophy and on the shock of salvation by means other than religious beliefs, and many members of the audience will have a difficult time to relate.

WARNING**: To those who are religious, and esp. practicing Catholics, you might find this movie offensive and/or blasphemous.**

Now that that's out of the way, this movie starts off on the mysterious edge and moves further and further until you're sucked in.

Alex (Heath Ledger) is a young Catholic priest, who has recently heard that his mentor, Dominic, was found dead in his home. The powers that be have written this off as suicide (a cardinal sin) as Dominic had been ex-communicated from the church long ago.

When Alex visits the morgue and sees strange markings upon Dominic's body--he now knows his death was more than just a simple suicide.

Alex and his co-priest, Thomas (Mark Addy), decide to delve into the investigation, and decide that maybe it was other forces that killed Dominic, rather than his own hand.

Alex discovers the "Sin Eaters" --a religious sect that can absolve the sins of the damned, by freeing his soul. When this ritual is done, the sinner's soul is ultimately freed, without knowledge of past sins. The sins (and the knowledge of) are now the burden of the "sin eater". However, this is done for a price--your own life. **

I won't go any further, but by now, you can pretty much get a gist of what the story is about and how it plays out.

I recall seeing TV ads for this movie right before it was released on DVD. It's advertised as a horror movie about an order within the Catholic Church that investigates the paranormal. So, of course, when I finally did buy this movie in 2005, that's what I was expecting, and what I wanted. But what this movie actually is is something completely different. I didn't like it much the first time around, and I felt cheated. But then it stayed with me and I eventually watched it again, with an open mind, and again and again. Now it's one of my favorite movies.

I will not lie - in many places the movie feels like a failed attempt to be an intelligent thriller and a scary horror movie at the same time. It's not scary, not one bit, but it does feel like a thoughtful, intelligent, and atmospheric movie. It also requires the viewer to pay attention. It's the sort of film that upon repeat viewings you'll pick up on things you missed before, and you may just like it the more you see it.

The cast, mostly transplanted from the director's previous "A Knight's Tale", is pretty good, and the only problems I saw were an occasional badly written line that they did their best with. The film is also very appealing visually and has a gothic tone and atmosphere that I really liked.

I would recommend this film to fans of supernatural movies, but be cautious because it's not what you'd expect.

The Order (Brian Helgeland, 2003)

There are so many people involved with this film who need to have the question "what the hell were you thinking?" asked to them.

The idea is fantastic. The head of an order of priests, Father Dominic (Francesco Carnelluti) is found dead in his apartment, leaving only two living priests in his sect, Alex (Heath Ledger, with whom Helgeland previously worked in A Knight's Tale) and Thomas (Mark Addy, who will forever be remembered as "the fat guy" from The Full Monty). The two of them, accompanied by a woman (Shannyn Sossamon) Alex has conflicting feelings about, travel to Rome on the orders of a high-ranking cardinal (Robocop's Peter Weller) to investigate Dominic's death, and along the way uncover a number of strange and wonderful things, including the last living Sin Eater, William Eden (Benno Furmann, who will be playing Siegfried in the upcoming film version of The Ring of the Nibelungs), who is in some way intimately connected with Dominic's death.

It all sounds fabulous on paper. And, to an extent, it is. But various factors kill the movie. Both Weller and Furmann deliver their lines as if someone told them, "sound as artificial as possible." Weller might as well still have the metal suit on. And the odd pair of "orphans" who hang around outside Dominic's apartment; I'm sure that, in a director's cut, we'd have some concrete idea of why they hang around Dominic, but a hypothesis is offered, and then the plot thread disappears into the distance, never to be heard from again.

One rather expects a level of ludicrousness from Ledger, Sossamon, and Helgeland, who between them were responsible for A Knight's Tale a few years back. This, however, goes beyond silly. It borders on brilliant, but stays just this side of bad. Which makes it seem even worse. ** ½

"The Order" starts off well enough. A priest bikes through Rome and arrives at his home, a dilapidated structure haunted by zombie-like children who look more like they should be in the pages of a Gap Kids photo shoot than haunting the outskirts of a major metropolis. The priest and the children gaze meaningfully at each other, and then the priest goes inside. There, he's greeted by a suave younger man in a nice suit. There is danger in the air.

Unfortunately, the movie never gets any better. Although Heath Ledger pulls off the tragically hip, he's completely unbelievable as a young Catholic priest. Shannyn Sossamon plays a completely vapid love interest. There's a back-story there, but it's shallow and ill conceived.

Everyone in the movie, outside of Ledger and Sossaman and their sidekick, appear to be corrupt, but in a VH1 goes to Europe sort of way. Where does one find a renegade cult figure? Why, in an underground Catholic themed disco, of course. Just follow the Sinead O'Connor look-alike through the catacombs.

That, to me, is the central problem with this film. It tries far too hard to look edgy and cool, and completely loses track of the story. The typical pseudo-philosophy dished out in the mental struggle between our hero and his antagonist is so ham-handed and dull as to be completely laughable.

The cinematography is gorgeous and the idea behind the plot is nifty. I really wish the makers of this film had put more time into it, because it could have been something worth watching.

I love dark, atmospheric, Romantic films with a gothic flair. So when I heard the reviews of this film being so cruel when it first came out, I was thinking, "Who cares, I'll probably like it just fine."

But unfortunately, I don't.

The premise of the order sounds fine. A mystery being called the Sin Eater goes around absolving people of their sins, but also killing people while it does so. So the Vatican Church has to send in its tactical strike squad (sounds like it could be something out of a Dan Brown book), aka Heath Ledger playing a young priest, to go destroy this Sin Eater; after all, the Sin Eater is horning in on church business here facilitating the relationship between Jesus and man in redemption. They can't have that.

I have always been fascinated with the idea of priests as something like holy warriors fighting the forces of darkness, be it "The Exorcist" or comic books. This film unfortunately doesn't do much with the idea.

First, let me say that the atmosphere set is very dark and Romantic (capital R), and I was pleased with it. You have every thing you'd expect from a movie like this - solemn priests, graveyards, ancient churches, demons, ravens, candle-light, a hushed air of mysterious menace - very fine stuff. The lighting is wonderfully evocative, and the sets and the costumes are all well done in my opinion.

But little else is good. The acting... this is just my opinion, but it feels like little effort was put into the acting. The lines are delivered perfunctorily, with competence, yet I'm not really buying into it. Which was a shame, because I did want to. Heath Ledger in particularly was a big disappointment because generally I like his work. I thought Shannyn Sossamon was very fetching (She'd make me re-think my priestly vows) in an interesting role where she plays Ledger's "love interest" so to speak, an artist who was possessed in the past and even now may very well be quite disturbed.

The pacing of the plot is bad. The movie stumbles and lurches, and doesn't ever really pick up. When you get right down to it, the story is threadbare and doesn't have a lot to work with it. Finally, I won't give anything away, but the last third or so of the movie is pretty terrible. Even halfway through the movie I was still optimistic, but I just thought toward the end it got really boring, contrived, and even ridiculous.

The DVD extras aren't anything to write home about. Trailers, commentary, and some deleted scenes that actually really did add nothing and deserved to be cut. The commentary at least shows the director was enthusiastic about this project, which is commendable, but overall, this movie really was a letdown.

There's a plausible premise for a horror film in this hodge podge of a movie - unfortunately, any discovery of it is three or four script rewrites beyond the version currently being served up. Even if you can wait till the third act, when the movie starts to pick up steam and supplies a little intrigue, you still have to sit through a number of ridiculously stultifying scenes and some of the most god-awful, dull dialogue imaginable for the first hour. The directorial and writing lapses are so shoddy and glaring they're near unforgivable - but don't take my word for this - just look at the actors' embarrassed faces as they mumble through this stuff.