‘The Order’: Jude Law Hunts Neo-Nazis in Justin Kurzel’s Cautionary True-Crime Thriller

Tony Sokol

Australian director Justin Kurzel’s “The Order” is a throwback to unsung classic federal police procedurals of the 1980s, including underlying social messaging, and emotionally fractured law enforcement personnel. Jude Law plays Terry Husk, a respected FBI agent who put in more than his dues. Nicholas Hoult channels Bob Mathews, an all-too-real militant planning to disrupt the government in 1984 in a plot that is years in the making. Kurzel, who held back nothing in his unflinching 2011 debut, “The Snowtown Murders,” and disturbingly recreated the events of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in his Cannes-award winning 2021 drama, “True History of the Kelly Gang,” presents a restrained and diligently authentic cautionary action tale for “The Order.”

Screenwriter Zach Baylin adapted Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s 1978 young adult fiction novel, “The Silent Brotherhood,” for the feature. The Order which gives the name to the film is a true group of white-supremacist revolutionaries, quite real at the time. The budding militia’s name was taken from “The Turner Diaries,” which includes six indefensible stages of revolt against the U.S. government. “The Order” calls it the blueprint for extreme-right terrorist acts, and the post-film credit scrolls explain how it formed the bases of attacks from the Oklahoma City bombings to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. 

The Gerhardts’ book is as much a character in the film as a clue. The book is required bedtime stories at the new Aryan offshoot compound, which doesn’t seem odd when compared to a scene where the encouraging fascistic usurper teaches an innocent looking six-year-old how to shoot a rather intimidating long-range firearm in a male bonding movement tagging the kid for life. This elevates the film into something larger than the detective thriller genre with a subtext of a docudrama about a true attempt at armed insurrection, and its long-term goals. It is a family film for the disenfranchised and those who chastise them.

The proceedings follow two parallel paths: a federal law enforcement contingent with its broken veteran lead officer, and the self-proclaimed revolutionaries and their charismatic captain. The chiefs share one moment on screen. It epitomizes their dynamic. Agent Hulk is on a water bank deer hunting, unsuccessfully because his incessant cigarette smoke keeps the game at a distance. Hoult is the predator, playing with his prey by appearing as a disarmingly helpful neighbor, happy to give pointers to a new gunslinger on his own surf and turf.

Husk is a damaged FBI agent who’s seen it all, from the Ku Klux Klan to New York City’s Lucchese mob family, and their multi-site disposal arrangements for talkative young nannies. Agent Husk is a 1980s veteran cop movie stereotype: jaded, faded, and an alcoholic pill-popper. The scene-for-scene chain-smoker sports a heart surgery scar barely buried beneath a flabby period-appropriate hairy torso, and is estranged from his wife and daughters. The only cliché Husk never utters is “I’m getting too old for this shit.” Jude Law makes it work, leading with his 1970s macho mustache, and charging into guaranteed doom as a first line of defense. Husk is reassigned to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in the Pacific Northwest to chill out, but he brings on the heat, doggedly tracking the white supremist group making public discourse in plain sight, but gathering deep underground.

Hoult’s Bob Mathews is a blue-eyed devil. A self-designated revolutionary whose agenda is to deliver the promised land to Caucasians, driving to the seas those Jewish overlords holding white men in racial economic bondage. Matthews usurps the neo-Nazi Aryan Brotherhood leader Minister Richard Butler’s (Victor Slezak) congregation right before another long-winded, though deepthroated, homily. Pleading for conquest over defeat, the assembled brethren opt to fight for white power, as the cheers of revolution drown out the call and response necessary for any good sermon. The scene is as powerful as it is disconcerting. The middle has no place in the movement’s plans for theocratic, race-entitled, right-wing fanaticism. There is no middle ground.

Enough at the center to be the peripheral force of the movement is Butler, the white nationalist who founded the Aryan Nations cult. The group hides in plain sight in a nearby compound. Butler is a fervent puritanical extremist, sermonizing as an esteemed preacher, while exploiting political opportunities that could create a Christian Fascist State. Uncovering FBI involvement pushes Butler to attempt to rein in Matthews from the rash of violent robberies. Butler’s plan is set for ten to 20 years when the House of Representatives and the Senate will usher in the votes for theocratic fundamentalists. Butler is the true villain. Matthews is a thug with no long-term chance of advancement. Matthews is a zealot, and again, a charismatic one. This despite his penchant for informant removal and marital entitlement.

With his mysterious aura, and obnoxiously aggressive attitude barring his way from precinct comradery, Husk soon joins forces with the only cop who can put up with him. Deputy Sherriff Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan) grew up in the area, and is familiar with local associates to the white power gang. Bowen is the emotional center for the film, openly insubordinate to his do-nothing Sheriff, and equally critical of the slow speed of FBI legwork. The specific group of crimes under his investigation obsesses his thoughts over his own family, which Bowen is beyond devoted to.

With far too little screen time, FBI agent Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett) still manages to command a former superior, admit when she’s made a mistake, produce a real emotional response to a ghastly racist target practice image, and provide the only bit of mirth “The Order” includes in its stressed, suspenseful atmosphere, and professional demeanor. This is not to say Agent Carney is anything but a serious, committed, law enforcer with a knack for strategic tactics, and an adaptive approach to changing scenarios. She just knows how to make errant agents welcome, until she pushes them away.

Marc Maron is the most suitable voice to embody real-life radio phone-in host Alan Berg on stage and screen since Eric Bogosian’s turn in “Talk Radio.” Maron takes the anti-Semitic blows, and when he hits back so defiantly, calling on the recognition of sameness of Jews and Gentiles, it comes from a place of inadvertent, rather than accidental, suicide. The response comes as MAC-10 submachine gun bullets which rip through Berg’s arms, throat, rib cage, stomach, and heart spray from Matthews’ domestic terrorists in 1983. The targeted peacemakers are accused by one side, and terrorized for proof.

The domestic terrorists in the film are as unique as their real-life counterparts. Up until that time, the Aryan Nations’ movement was not known to rob banks to fund an army but, like the bombings of the synagogues and porn theaters, the offensives point to a new offensive strategy. Meanwhile, the new militia demands action, and offers results. Matthews wants an armed uprising, immediately. He arms insurrectionary terrorists; paid for by the take of each heist, which rises from the first robbery’s $45,000 to the final $3.6 million Brinks armored truck score; as well as an overstock of counterfeit currency. 

Though a preceding period piece, the climax recalls the FBI’s later siege on Waco, Texas, which fueled the fires of conspiratorial reprisal. Cinematographer Adam Arkapaw illustrates the period with muted detail. “The Order” is a reminder that every genre can raise itself beyond the tedious repetition of its most egregious reinvention. Kurzel allows the FBI its inept and human moments, humanizing boilerplate personifications in passing. Except for the explosive climax, the film never stoops to the gratuitous violence of law-enforcement-based entertainment. “The Order” also depicts a fair expanse of the dangerous terrain still growing from the seeds of militant farmers.

“The Order” releases Dec. 6 in select theaters.