The Order DVD: Review By brianroche

"The Order" is mostly a bad movie. I kind of liked it. I'll tell you why, but first let's pay some bills.

In "The Order" Heath Ledger and Mark Addy play Father Alex Bernier and Father Thomas Garrett, two of a renegade order of Catholic priests known as Carolingians. When they learn of their mentor Dominic's susp*cious death, they go to Rome to help the Vatican investigate. There they are joined by Mara (Sossamon), a woman who has left the mental institution she was committed to after trying to kill Ledger during an exorcism - hers. Cardinal Driscoll (Peter Weller, shockingly white-haired) arrives there to tell them that Dominic's suspected murderer is a 'sin eater' - a heretic who works outside of church authority, taking on the burden of a one's sins for a price, so that the sinner can die with grace. The sin eater turns out to be a creatively-facial haired creep named William Eden (Benno Fuhrmann), who despite his creepiness is not as evil as they suspected. With Addy incapacitated after a demon attack (an apparently common occurrence for his character, a globe-trotting exorcist), Ledger is unprotected from Eden's influence. Eden takes Ledger under his wing and shows him how to sin-eat. Before long everyone's dead except Ledger, who goes on into eternity as the new sin eater. That's the movie, ladies and gents.

Here's why "The Order" is particularly bad:

- The movie shouldn't really be called "The Order" - indeed, its original title was "The Sin Eater". Sensing a goose egg on their hands, Fox gave it a generic new title and a quiet release date in September 2003. Any life this movie will ever have is on video, so it's too bad Fox didn't stay with the unique and lurid original title, which would stand out on the video shelves.

- The movie contains a lot of detail about secret sects of Catholicism, of secret societies and rituals, and lots of Latin and Aramaic. We know it contains these things because immediately after they are mentioned, they are explained. For example, at one point Ledger points out some Aramaic writing: "This is Aramaic - the language of Christ!" Also, He and Addy frequently repeat an Aramaic phrase in reference to sin eating: "Barathe May, Barath Sec - Blood In, Blood Out!" When they both already know that it means 'blood in, blood out'. They're trying to explain things to the audience, but end up insulting our intelligence.

- The special digital effects in "The Order" are just awful. They are mostly employed during the sin-eating scenes, in which 'sin' is digitally embodied as some kind of jellyfish that rises out of the dying sinner's mouth and into the mouth of the sin eater. During this mouth-to-mouth sin transfer, a series of abstract images flood the screen supposedly representing the transferred sins. It's just as silly as it sounds. Silliest of all, the movie doesn't need these effects. The sin-eating could have and should have been done low-tech, with just the actors and the sin-eating ritual as described in the film. This approach would actually match the somber tone of the rest of the movie. So, either writer/director Brian Helgeland was tempted with the glory of a big-budget special effects horror movie, or the studio would only make the film if it had special effects to market it.

- While I'm hacking on "The Order"'s special effects, can anyone tell me where the vampire-unconstituted-into-a-flock-of-bats effect came from originally? Was it "Bram Stoker's Dracula"? It was also used in "LXG", and is used here, but for demonic children instead of vampires. It's an instant cliche, like the car chase that's interrupted by the ethnic neighborhood parade. But whenever I see a vampire/demon unconstitute him/her/them/itself into a flock of bats, I always wonder, what if one of the bats flies off on its own? Does the vampire reconstitute without his fangs? An eyeball? Is he capeless?

- Among the non-bat-flock-unconstituting villains in the "The Order" is a masked villain whose identity is supposed to be a secret. I usually hate to hear someone brag about figuring out a movie's secret in advance, because you can sense in the braggarts' tone of voice that they went to the movie for the purpose of figuring out the secret. Me, I go to movies to see movies. But this villain's true identity is so obvious that even Helgeland, on his commentary track, laments that most viewers will figure it out on the masked villain's first appearance. And you will too. And if we had known this villain's true identity all along, it would have provided the film with a sense of conflict.

There really isn't any tension in "The Order" - but that's not a criticism. I actually liked that aspect of the movie. The movie begins, introduces Ledger and the supporting characters and moves surely toward its conclusion. ('Surely' that is, except for the bad FX and the pointlessly secret villain.) There are no genuine roadblocks toward his transformation. In fact, every other character, good and evil, actually helps Ledger achieve his final state. Scenes that would be punched up as highlights in most movies are presented here as if they are of no more of less brooding importance as the rest of the movie - scenes like a priest stealing a body from a morgue, a suicide, a love scene, and one or two 'major' revelations. Only the sin-eating scenes are given much drama. This lends a quietly sad air to the proceedings which fits Ledger's character's worldview.

The visuals help create the melancholy universe of "The Order". Shot entirely in Rome, the movie has the exotic Euro-ambience that William Friedkin and John Frankenheimer have previously brought to their foreign-shot films. Nicola Pecorini was the DP, and has washed Rome in golden sunlight and dark shadows (he also shot "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"). I am always pleasantly surprised when a longtime screenwriter becomes a very visual director. Whatever this movie's flaws, his strong visual sense, aided by Pecorini and the production designer, will aid Helgeland through his directorial career.

In three major studio genre productions ("Payback" and "A Knight's Tale" in addition to "The Order"), Helgeland has quietly developed an individual perspective as a filmmaker. Each has a single renegade character working his way through the ranks of a large and morally corrupt organization to achieve, not just a goal, but his main purpose in life. Each film knows a lot about the environment in which it takes place (this movie knows more about Catholicism than a lot of more overtly religious movies). In each, this rebel figure has a good friend who helps him through his journey and a good woman who loves him. And for the last two films, the rebel figure, the sidekick, and the woman were played by the same actors: Heath Ledger, Mark Addy ("Full Monty"), and Shannyn Sossamon ("Rules of Attraction"), respectively. Find me an unlikelier rep company.

Heath Ledger was foisted onto the public as an instant star in movies like "The Patriot" and "A Knight's Tale", without ever proving his mettle as an actor. Here he's a compelling lead despite his potential miscasting, as a rather young rebel priest.

Addy is good as well as the sad best friend, goading Ledger to live the normal life that he cannot - I love his line, "Women - can't live with 'em, Can't live WITH them . . ."

Shannyn Sossamon is one of those actresses whose stunning beauty blinds us to her acting skill. Here she's ethereal without being dippy, and convinces us that Ledger could fall for her on personality alone.

Peter Weller's Cardinal is wise and shifty, seeming to bebop to his own inner soundtrack. He's always brought a personal spin to even the most basic role, and it's good to see him as a priest evil enough to want to take over the Catholic church and yet priestly enough to warn you to watch you language.

- Commentary by Brian Helgeland. Helgeland takes us through the film slowly but with a deceptively dry sense of humor - at first he seems nearly comatose until his wry humor emerges. He's a smart guy who knows his church history. From the commentary we learn his tricks for making Rome look like New York or Paris in certain scenes - while the New York stuff is masked well enough, for some reason it now looks like the same world as the rest of the movie, which might be a good thing.

I wish he had at least one of his 'rep company' actors with him for this track - supposedly, the track Helgeland does with Paul Bettany on the "Knights Tale" disc is a riot. Disappointingly, he makes no mention of the film's many difficulties before, during and after production. For example, the movie was originally to have been made right after "Payback" with Antonio Bandera in the lead. The William Eden part was originally played by Vincent Cassell, who was replaced after three weeks due to the standard creative differences. There were also rumors that the special effects had to be redone a few times. And of course there's the title change. I could understand if Helgeland was trying to be diplomatic to preserve his relationship with Fox, but he did speak to the press a little bit in frustration over the release date. It's a shame when filmmakers think the diplomacy of the promotional process has to extend to the DVD commentary and other features - the customer has already bought the movie, are they going to return it and never buy another because someone made frank comments on the supplements?

- Deleted Scenes w/ optional Helgeland commentary. There are more than 30 minutes of deleted scenes, but unfortunately no footage of Cassell as Eden. These are all shoe leather and deserved to be cut. For some reason, dailies are included of one sequence.

- Theatrical Trailer. It's a decent trailer and a standard feature at this point. People complain about trailers on discs, but I like them. The craft of trailer making evolves subtly from year to year, and someday, this will stand as an example of 2003's Trailerology.

In 1.85:1, "The Order" looks great. The mostly dark palate makes great use of occasional shards of yellow sunlight to show off a spooky and secret Rome.

The movie sounds fine. It's got English 5.1 and 2.0 that show off David Torn's music score well. It might might well also have French and Spanish 2.0, as these things often do, but I didn't check. I promise to next time.

"The Order" is what the video rental experience is all about - taking a chance on a flawed but worthwhile genre picture. Despite its flaws, "The Order" is a compelling, dark experience.