The Order

It's with great joy I watched THE ORDER. Easily Jean-Claude Van Damme's best film since Universal Soldier (1992). The author Les Weldon also wrote Replicant (2001), where he also uses lots of clichés, but in this film they work much better. The direction of The Order (by Sheldon Lettich) is very nice, but some is lost in the very uneven editing. The main low-point of this film is the music, which is awful as best and extremely annoying at worst.

Fight scenes are few, but good, and it seems that Van Damme has tried to get more Jackie Chan looking feeling to this film than he is used too. There are plenty of rip-offs from both Indiana Jones-movies and Project A II (by Jackie Chan, 1987).

The plot is about an ancient Order with converted muslims, christians and jews. And this is not such a bad idea for a film. The Order is not all-bad, but the bad guys of course have the top-positions, trying to use the Order for their purposes.

This time Van Damme isn't such a brilliant guy as we are used to see him. On the contrary, he is actually portraid as a bit stupid, and sometimes even unlucky. This is very nice, since the co-stars - Charlton Heston and Sofia Milos - gets a chance to shine, which is rare in these kind of films.

This is also perhaps one of the more down-to-earth movies Van Damme made lately, and it has a really good setting and use of locations. Overall, this is an interesting and very good movie which I truly enjoyed watching. And as I said, this is perhaps his best movie since Universal Soldier, and I actually place it as the number 3 movie of all Van Damme's work.

I truly hope that a sequel comes out of this one, since they really put it that way in the ending! :-)

Great work - if you like Van Damme, you can't go wrong with this one!

Honestly, I bought this movie at Wal-Mart, as it was in the $5.50 bin and it looked like something that I would enjoy making fun of. It sat around for quite a while before I eventually popped it in to view it and to have a field day making fun of it. However, I didn't hate it. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. Yes, the film is filled with all sorts of different action cliches, but it is an enjoyable film if you don't try to analyze it and just enjoy it for what it is. The film has some good heart to it and the filmmakers themselves give off the impression that they enjoyed making this movie too. I would not advise anyone to go out of their way to see this, but if you stumble onto it, watch it with low expectations and you won't be let down.

I needed a DVD to test out whether the DVD reader in a laptop I was fixing was working, so I grabbed "The Order" out of a pile my father had left me to use. As I was playing the disc, I got hooked. I agree with the consensus of previous reviewers before me. This movie is nothing special, with thin plot, thin characters, and low-budget sets (when they're not using real locations). But what the movie has going for it is spectacular scenery, compliments of the Holy Land, decent chase scenes and stunts, and a very appealing Van Damme, probably at his most relaxed and confident. If you see it playing anywhere on cable, be sure to check it out. It's not cerebral, but it's entertaining and watchable (and short).

The film begins with a medieval prologue telling the following : ¨1099 A.D. It was an age of religious Crusades and Holy Wars. After a grueling for-year campaign , the knights of Christendom finally arrive at the gates of Jerusalen. During the furious battle of the Holy City, a Flemish knight , Charles Le Vaillant , had a life-changing epiphany. Le Valliant was struck by the hypocrisy of killing fellow human beings in the same God. ¨The Fazar¨ Le Valliant's account of his experiences for days after that bloody battle, until he found the entrance of a cave that ran beneath the length of the Holy City. Inside that cave , he began to record his epiphany which became the basis for a new religious sect. An order that would combine the fundamental tenets of three major religions of his day. His first converts were fellow Christian knights who'd also become disenchanted by the bloodshed. The force of his convictions even won over Jews and Muslims former enemies who now became willing converts to the new faith. Many years completing the original ¨Fazar¨, Le Vaillant had further revelations. He wrote these down, intending to add them as the final chapter. Around the same time , he and his followers were accused of heresy by the Crusader authorities. On their way to Syria , he and his disciples were intercepted by of the same Crusaders he had once commanded. During the battle that followed , Le Vaillant died a martyr's death. The final chapter he had written was lost.¨ After that, the picture is set in Odessa, Ukraine, where Van Damme robbing valuable eggs to Russian mafia. The eggs were designed by Peter Faberge, a special gift to Czar Nichola with inlay twenty-four carat gold. Later On, Jean-Claude Van Damme reunites with his father(Vernon Dobtcheff) and learns about the lost chapter of ¨The Fazar¨, it happens to be the holy scripture of an obscure Middle-Eastern sect called ¨The Order¨ (ruled actually by Brian Thompson). Then his father go to Israel, but he disappears and Van Damme goes to country to find him. There is received by an old professor (Charlton Heston) and happen several adventures, dangers and risks.

This movie exhibited in some countries direct to video packs violent action, suspense, shoot-outs, and martial arts fighting and results to be quite amusing. Tough Van Damme plays finely a sympathetic thief, splendid Sofia Milos as enjoyable police who finally falls in love with him and Charlton Heston plays convincingly a veteran archaeologist in a brief appearance .The movie is pointlessly energetic, occasionally fun and entertaining and for that reason will appeal to true devotee Van Damme. It packs an atmospheric soundtrack by Pino Donaggio and colorful cinematography by David Garfinkel. It's produced with middling budget by Milennium with its usual producers Boaz Davidson, Trevor Short and Danny, Avi Lerner , furthermore by Van Damme's 777 Films Corp .The movie is professionally directed by Sheldon Lettich. He spent several years in the US Marines Corps, including a time in Vietnam war. Lettich is filmmaker of Van Damme various hits( Double impact,Lionheart, Hard cops), besides is author of hunk men vehicles such as Daniel Bernhardt(Perfect day),Dolph Lundgren(List patrol) and Mark Dacascos(Only the strong). Rating : Acceptable and passable. The flick will appeal to Jean-Claude Van Damme fans and noisy action enthusiasts.

This is got to be the best (van)damn movie EVER... if not the GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE!

Not since the likes of "Evil Dead 2" has a movie of this caliber been unleashed upon the unsuspecting horde of mankind!!!

It is so ridiculous, it goes all the way around the quality circle and hits 'awesome'!

But you just have to see it to believe it.

I love half second shots of their faces during the car chase scene, van Damme kicking EVERYONE in the movie(and i mean EVERYONE! not a single human being in this movie is spared from van Damme's kung fu FURY!!!), van Damme using his martial arts to get whatever he wants, the fight scene in the shallow fountain, the shot of the gun landing in the produce, Charelton Heston, the sexy cop who always ran around with her long lucious hair down and her shirt 3 buttons open (yum!), Rudy (van Damme's character) always giving his dad a "high five!", the music (oh God, the music)...

The list goes on... Its endless!

Simply put, this movie is a cinematic masterpiece. The director is a brilliant man with a keen and precise sense of the celluloid artform, as you will see with each perfectly timed and precisely angled shot that creates the awesomeness that is "The Order".

You have to see it to believe it.

My review: 9/10 Go watch it!