Product Description

Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger) is a member of an arcane order of priests who is sent to Rome to investigate the mysterious death of the head of this order. The body may be of a Sin Eater, a renegade who offers absolution, last rites and therefore a path to heaven outside the jurisdiction of the church. Alex enlists the aid of his old comrade Father Thomas and of a troubled artist (Shannyn Sossamon) upon whom he once performed an exorcism. He soon finds himself plunged directly into the face of unimaginable evil, murder, and ultimately, a fate worse than death. The Order will find you!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10518 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-12-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Amazon.com
Writer-director Brian Helgeland tried something different with The Order, and surely that counts for something. This brooding supernatural thriller was immediately dismissed by critics, and it's easy to see why it flopped: it's full of solemn, quasi-religious ruminations, it's murky in both visual and thematic content, and it demands the viewer's focused attention, which amounts to pissing in the shallow pool of big-studio filmmaking. And yet those qualities also give The Order some modest cult potential, as it tells the story of Alex (Heath Ledger, star of Helgeland's A Knight's Tale), a rebellious priest from an arcane fringe of Catholicism, who investigates the death of his excommunicated mentor and discovers the existence of a modern day "sin eater," capable of cleansing souls of evil, who has chosen Alex as his would-be successor. A troubled love interest (Knight's Tale costar Shannyn Sossamon) and an evil cardinal (Peter Weller) offer hope and damnation, respectively, but it's up to individual viewers to decide if The Order offers anything of lasting interest. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Dark And Delightful
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.

Suspenseful, dark and delightful.
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 Maritza Volmar

Ouch. So much promise here, but it doesn't deliver.
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.