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Three stars of Brian Helgeland-directed "A Knight's Tale" come back -- Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, and Shannyn Sossamon -- in this religious thriller. I wanted to see again the lovely Ms. Sossamon (whose role is not big here), but what I saw turned out a (literally)the tudors dvd set painfully bad film that could have killed her career so easily.

The alternate title of the film was "The Sin Eater" which would be more appropriate for the occasion. Heath Ledger's character, Alex, investigates the mysterious death of the master of his order, and he comes to realise there is a man hiding behind -- Eden, or "the Sin Eater" played by German Benno Furmann ("The Princess and the Warrior"). As Alex and his trusted friend Thomas (Mark Addy) delves the murky case, we know there is a conspiracy behind the thick curtain of ncis dvd set the church.

You see also Ms. Sossamon as Alex's love interest, and Peter Weller as one of the possible successor to the Pope.

It is clear that director Helgeland researched several things about the Catholic church, to make the basis of the film. However, everything is too slow and tedious to grab our attention -- the initial death of the mentor, which should be more grisly or shocking, happens behind the closed door so we are not scared nor interested in it at all. Moreover, the film's script is not effective. Though Shannyn Sossamon and Mark Addy in particlar have no substantial function in the film, they continue showing up over and over again, only to confuse everything.

Worse is the bland acting, and all the actors are guilty of making the film insipid, especially Heath Ledger whose emotionally detached portrayal of Alex is too off-putting for us. And the photography by Nicola Pecorini (famous for Dario Argento films) is also too dark when at night, which does not help, except inducing us to sleep (which I married with children dvd box set did).

But the worst is the idea of using CGIs in this kind of occult films, in which delicately expressed character and carefully handled atmosphere play the vital part in creating the scares. When special effects appear in this film, we know that this is money-enhanced effctes, and that idea on our side instantly kills the potentials of the film. Send them a copy of "The Exorcist" and have them watch 100 times.