The Order

These days, I never know what to expect from a Van Damme film. Is it going to be the old high-kicking style, the awful Dennis Rodman-era stuff, or completely different ("he's an actor!") stuff like his most recent and very good film "The Replicator."

I had the same reservations about "The Order". What to expect? Well, the answer is somewhere in the middle. For Van Damme it's a return to his fighting roots with plenty of martial arts and action with less emphasis on acting (which is a good thing).

The plot is a bit lofty, but moves very quickly with some genuinely good fight sequences. The characters, while not Oscar material, are interesting in their own way and include a very sexy leading lady (in tight tube tops!), the guy from "X-files" as a villain, and Charlton Heston who plays a spunky old professor and gets killed far too quickly.

While there may be a few too many things going on (ie. a secret sect, a bomb, a buried treasure, a kidnapping, a heist, an expensive egg, etc.), overall, this film provides good comedy-action entertainment and is not a bad way to spend two hours. Just leave your thinking cap at the door, buy an extra-large tub of popcorn, and enjoy. 4/5 Stars.

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!

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!

I've always been a fan of Jean-Claude van Damme, so I've been mad that his recent movies haven't got theatrical releases, while the latest Adam Sandler and the current breed of gross-out teen movies have. I'd much rather see van Damme on the big screen than another teen movie. Although THE ORDER is far from his best or my favorite of his films (those would be HARD TARGET, SUDDEN DEATH, MAXIMUM RISK, and LEGIONNAIRE), it's still pretty good, even if it does drag in some places and has some hard-to-understand accents. But you can understand enough to know the basic idea of the movie, so it doesn't really matter. Written by van Damme, the story moves had a decent pacer, but the direction could have been a little tighter in some scenes. Van Damme is particularly good, and though it's not his best acting (that would be MAXIMUM RISK), it's better than some of his earlier ones.

The film makes good use of its Israeli locations, sexy newcomer Sofia Milos makes a feisty heroine, and co-stars Ben Cross and Brian Thompson offer good support in roles that are smaller than they should be. Unfortunately, however, Charlton Heston is wasted. I kept saying to myself, "Why go to all the trouble to get a famous big-name veteran screen star to play such a teeny, tiny little role?" His part would have been better suited for the unknown who played van Damme's father, with Heston playing the father. That would have been much better. As I said, some parts tend to drag a little bit, but the action scenes are well-done, my favorite being the entire climactic sequence in the underground tunnel system. There's even some funny bloopers that run before the end credits, though only a few; some more would have been nice.

All-in-all, one of van Damme's better movies storywise, and though I'm not sure if I would actually buy the DVD, I would probably make it an occasional rental. Then again, I'm a big van Damme fan, so I'll probably buy it next time I see it just to have it.