I don’t know if anybody is making better true-crime movies right now than Justin Kurzel. The director has killed it in this genre multiple times, including Snowtown, True History of the Kelly Gang, and Nitram, but his best might just be the gripping thriller The Order. Based on the real-life white supremacist group known as The Order that terrorized the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s, the film offers roles for Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, and Tye Sheridan that cuts against the grain for them. It’s a gritty, violent, and exciting film that grabs you right from the jump and doesn’t let go.
Kurzel just has a knack for these stories that capture a culture of violence. On the surface, the details sound very familiar. Burnt out fedreal agent with a bad home life teams with a young cop too take on a violent gang leader with a messiah complex. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was any of a thousand similar movies. But The Order was a very real group of Aryan brothers, inspired by the notorious book The Turner Diaries. It laid out the groundwork for starting an armed revolution that would launch a race war, and has inspired generations of terrorists including Timothy McVeigh. Hoult sheds every bit of his Hollywood charm to play Bob Mathews, who took charge of an armed milita group that began committing armed robberies, targeted bombings, assassinations, and counterfeiting in an effort to become an army.
Law undergoes a similar transformation to play agent Terry Husk. A veteran FBI agent with a past going after the KKK and gangs such as La Costra Nostra, Husk is nevertheless a washed up shell of his former self. Heavily bearded, tired, and a heavy drinker, Husk has been moved to the Spokane, WA area to “slow down” after a recent heart attack. But when he gets wind of The Order’s actions, he’s like a dog with a bone and can’t let go. He teams with Sheridan’s young agent Jamie Bowen, a family man who knows many of The Order’s members personally.
The Order treads familiar ground, but it’s in Kurzel’s slick direction and the performances that the film really stands out. Kurzel always does a great job of getting into the minds of violent, charismatic men. Working with Hoult, the two craft a fascinating subject in Mathews, who has the charisma and skillful manipulation of a cult leader. His ability to convince others to do anything extends to his personal life, where he has has two women (Alison Oliver, Odessa Young) that he claims to love. Meanwhile, Husk is estranged from his family and seems to be throwing himself into work in an effort to forget them. There’s also a great role for Jurnee Smollett as a veteran agent who knows Husk and his personal demons all too well. Marc Maron has a small but pivotal role as confrontational Jewish radio host Alan Berg, who becomes a target of The Order in one of the film’s most vicious scenes. There’s no shortage of action for Law, Hoult, and Sheridan to carry as there’s rarely time to stop and catch a breath.
For Kurzel, this is the best mainstream film he’s done in his career. He misstepped in a major way with Assassin’s Creed, a big studio video game adaptation that just wasn’t in his wheelhouse. It was like some agent told him he should do it. But a movie like The Order is right where he should be, and it could have the mass appeal that Kurzel has long deserved.
