Priest Alex Bernier’s (Heath Ledger) mentor and friend has died. Alex has been asked by the church to go investigate the incident and along the way he finds much more than a simple murder. With the help of his friend Thomas Garrett (Mark Addy) and a woman named Mara Sinclair (Shannyn Sossamon) whom Alex performed an exorcism on, they soon find that the murder isn’t simply someone who kills, but rather someone who eats the sins of others before they die.
The Order had the potential to be really good, but it was severely confused on what it wanted to be. First, Heath Ledger’s Alex Bernier was a fantastic character. His setup and mysterious aura made him instantly interesting (plus he was Heath Ledger — which is interesting anyway for 2003). Anyway, his story and the initial connection between him and his dead mentor made for a really good beginning. Regretfully, the movie splits from here. Bernier’s desire and love for Sinclair gets in the way of the budding storyline that is well on its way. The movie tries to make something out of nothing between the two characters and then it takes that something out of nothing and forces into something that has already been established; like forcing a square peg into a round hole. Anyway, it concentrates so much on this love story that it gets away from the story it has already started, but then does a 180 and tries to retreat back to where it originally left off before the love story began.
You can see how confusing the writing gets from here.
The story continues and it starts to get back on track and you are introduced to the ‘sin-eater’, but then it decides it wants to be a love story again and brings Sinclair back briefly. At this point you’re going to wish the story just either became a tragic love story or a mystery filled with horror. Regardless, by the end of the film it tries to conclude, but you’re so disconnected from everything that you simply cannot connect to Alex and his present situation.
The movie fails because it simply tries to put two stories together that don’t have any business being with each other (much like a priest and Sinclair).
The only silver lining in this entire film is the strong acting provided. Ledger does a great job as the mysterious, lost Alex Bernier. His comedy counterpart Mark Addy provides a great audience stress reliever in the wise, old Thomas Garrett. Even the creepy Benno Fürmann, who does a commendable job as our favorite ‘sin-eater’. Robocop/Peter Weller is good, but he’s just as useful as Sinclair. All in all, the cast is pretty strong for The Order, but the story is too weak to make them look good.
If you happen to be a fan of the film then you’ll enjoy the Blu-ray quality that 20th Century Fox provides. It shines in 1080p and it sounds overly good on the audio side of things. It’s funny how even bad movies look good on Blu-ray, but at least the studios use almost the same amount of attention on the bad that they do with the good. Still, the quality HD picture you might get doesn’t make up for the lackluster movie that displays in it.
Finally, the features are far and few between. You get some commentary, some deleted scenes (and dailies — which is actually kind of cool) and the original trailer. I know when this movie released that it did decent numbers, so you get so-so features with those types of numbers. The positive is that some ‘other’ studios wouldn’t even bother including features in a movie that wasn’t very memorable.
I would have given an extra $10 to see a gag reel on this sucker.