What happened to Brian Helgeland? It wasn’t so long ago that he nabbed an Oscar for his snappy script adapting for “LA Confidential” and became one of Hollywood’s most prolific last-minute script doctors. Then came 2001’s “A Knight’s Tale,’ Helgeland’s first solo effort as both writer and director. The results were slightly disappointing.
Now zoom ahead two more years to 2003. Helgeland is again behind the camera to lens his own new script, and with several of his “Knight’s Tale” players in tow. Ledger is once again the star. Shannyn Sossamon is once again the wispy love interest. Mark Addy is once again the chubby sidekick and confidante. But this time, Helgeland’s intentions are far more serious. “The Order” is a dark, brooding rumination on good and evil, focusing on a troubled young priest’s brushes with a shady religious renegade known as the Sin Eater who absolves the sins of the dying outside the consent of the Church. Heavy stuff, and a welcome U-turn from the airy shenanigans of “Knight’s Tale.” Well, on paper, at least.
On screen, “The Order” is a flea-bitten mongrel of a movie, gnawing rabidly away at its audience until one is finally forced to kick it away and run screaming from its presence.
Everything plays false in “The Order.” The script gives the audience no one to root for and muddles its own already ambiguous notions of the rift between personal belief and church dogma, leaving viewers to wonder what the point of it all is. Alex (an unusually charmless Ledger) flip-flops back and forth (often in slo-mo, I should add) between wanting to lay the smack down on the Sin Eater and wanting to become one himself. That his ultimate decision and the reason behind it are confusing even at movie’s end are a problem that cannot be overstated or overlooked.
Though muted performances, lethargic direction, and a drab design are of little help, it’s Helgeland’s script that deserves the most venom. Helgeland, for instance, punctuates a woefully serious scene of Alex battling two demon children (don’t ask) with off-kilter “Seinfeld”-ish banter between Ledger and Addy. Pop culture seems Helgeland’s forte but it doesn’t do anyone’s career a favor to have Addy repeatedly call Ledger’s character “Spaghetti-O.”
It’s an epic voyage from confusion to apathy to frustration to boredom to self-induced euphoria and back again. It may be the worst movie of the year (it’s neck-and-neck with “Dreamcatcher”), and it dethrones 1987’s Fat Boys spectacular “Disorderlies” as the worst film I’ve ever seen with the word “Order” in the title. Unless you go with masochistic designs, then please avoid this one like a Biblical plague.
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