The Order

I heard many bad reviews on this film, but i decided to "blind buy" it on DVD anyways (only five bucks).

The story is cheesy, but different than the usual van damme fare. The setting was great, and some of the locations that the makers shot at were amazing to see. The action was great as well, and there were plenty of fight scenes to keep us van damme fans satisfied. after all, the fight scenes are what van damme fans are looking for in the first place, right? the fighting was well done, and van damme gives you all the classic kicks you can think of. For a DTV van damme action flick, you can do MUCH worse. I put in the movie expecting nothing, but after it ended, i had a smile.

RATING: 7/10

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).

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.

This movie is an action comedy. I don't it really was supposed to be a serious action movie. Most people criticize the movie, claiming that it didn't deliver and the fact that it wasn't one of Van Damme's worst movie. In respect to the movie, it is a action comedy in a lighter aspect. I admit though, the movie did have its flaws, and some of van damme's dialogue was too simplistic and cheesy. However, the had its moments, and van damme is still in top shape. I also liked how Van Damme used some of his old co-stars from previous movies (The Quest, Cyborg). Overall, this movie should satisfy any van damme fan. This movie could've produce a lot more, and the Charlton Heston character was unnecessary.

Final Judgement: **1/2/****

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!