The Sin Eater Review

After prancing about on a horse to the tune of Queen in "A Knight's Tale," Antipodean leading man of the moment Heath Ledger reunites with director Brian Helgeland for a very different flick. In a thriller of the distinctly supernatural kind, Ledger plays Alex, a member of an arcane order of demon fighting priests who must travel to Rome when his mentor dies in mysterious circumstances. Upon examining the body, Alex and sidekick Mark Addy discover strange marks which suggest their mentor was the victim of a Sin Eater, a renegade who can offer absolution at a price by physically consuming someone's sins. But while the Church officially deny the strange chap's existence, a maverick Cardinal nevertheless visits our hero in the middle of the night to deliver a sinister silver dagger smuggled out of the Vatican itself. And before he can even say one Hail Mary, Alex is plunged into a deadly mystery set to change his life forever.

Heath Ledger certainly brings a surprising gravitas to his performance as Alex, and the film - shot entirely on location in and around Rome - looks suitably lush and sinister throughout. But although it starts well, with the audience dropped into the middle of a number of sinister occurrences and subsequently forced to play catch up, the whole affair is sadly lacking in one element crucial to all thrillers and horror movies: suspense. And while the film has a suitably intriguing concept at its core taken from the history of the Catholic Church itself, it nevertheless failed to keep this cinema goer on the edge of his seat.