Review: The Order

Image courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.

Justin Kurzel's eerily prescient crime drama "The Order" is a gripping investigative thriller that features two powerful lead performances - Jude Law as a federal agent who had planned to wind down his career, only to get caught up in an investigation involving bank robberies, a few murders, and an Aryan Nation sect near Denver circa 1983, and Nicholas Hoult as one of the group's frightening true believers who wants white supremacists to step out of the shadows - you know, kind of like they're doing at this moment in the United States - and try to take the country by force.

The film opens with a man being led to the woods where he is executed. A later assassination involves a Jewish disc jockey who routinely gets hate calls from anti-Semites and goads them. The robberies involve everything from banks to armored cars and get increasingly more violent.

Law's FBI Agent Terry Husk has been relocated to the Denver region from Idaho, and he tells Officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), an eager and ambitious young cop on his new beat, that he once took on New York crime families and the KKK. Husk's family is supposed to join him in Denver, but the timeline seems vague and he rarely seems to hear from them. He routinely has nosebleeds and drinks a little too much.

Although Husk doesn't believe the crime patterns he's seeing - which span from late 1983 to December 1984 - aren't typical actions associated with Aryan Nation groups, he believes that an offshoot of a local white supremacist church - a group led by Hoult's Bob Matthews - are following the outline of a novel titled "The Turner Diaries" by William Luther Pierce, the chairman and founder of the white supremacist National Alliance.

We learn in the credits that the book has been used as inspiration for everything from the assassination of Alan Berg, the disc jockey killed during the film, to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1999 London nail bombings, and the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Much like "Zodiac" or various seasons of "True Detective" - with which this film shares a particular vibe - Kurzel's picture follows the federal agents and state police officer who become obsessed with the case and continue to investigate it at their own peril. 

The scenes involving Matthews and the white supremacist church in which he is a member are chilling, especially during a scene in which a man who was once seemingly Matthews' mentor discusses the long war that involves getting their members in positions of power, such as the courts and Congress. Just a month ago in the United States saw a victory for persons involved with groups such as the ones depicted here.

Kurzel's films often give us an inside look on dangerous groups of people, whether it's the bandits from "The True History of the Kelly Gang" or the mobster family in "Animal Kingdom." While "The Order" primarily tells the story from the point of view of Husk and Bowen, it occasionally follows Matthews and his crew. 

The film's ability to humanize these characters - Matthews is seen doting on his wife (and the other woman whom he has impregnated), although his wife looks disturbed when he shows his young son how to shoot an automatic weapon - makes their mission all the more disturbing. And that's the entire point: Fascists who want to force people to live in a society dictated by rules borne out of their own prejudices also have families, friends, and the occasional barbecue.

"The Order" is a solid true crime thriller that is even more relevant at the moment than it likely was when the film went into production. Law gives one of his better performances of recent years, while Hoult is convincing as the fanatic hiding in the body of a so-called family man and good citizen of the community. It's also terrifying because it hits so close to home at the present moment.