The Order

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.


The Darker Side of Light   September 6, 2003
D. Curreri (New Port Richey, FL United States)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful

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.


A great deal of wasted potential.   January 14, 2004
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful

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. **