The Order

With crime dramas, we’ve become used to filmmakers pulling out all the stops to make the stories as exciting and violent as possible. But there’s a movie out now, called The Order, directed by Justin Kurzel, that doesn’t try to do that, doesn’t indulge in any nonsense, because it doesn’t need to: the facts of the story, based on actual events, are suspenseful and thrilling enough on their own.

In 1983, an FBI agent stationed in Idaho investigates a series of spectacular robberies, while at the same time counterfeit money has been turning up. This taciturn and bad tempered agent, Terry Husk, is played by Jude Law, an English actor, and if I hadn’t known he was starring in this film I might not have recognized him. His American accent is perfect, but more than that, he plays a darker character than usual, a man who has experienced a lot of failure and disappointment and is angry about it. Law is amazing in this film, he holds it together, but he shares screen time with a nemesis, played by another English actor portraying an American.

The Order was adapted by Zach Baylin from a 1989 book called “The Silent Brotherhood” by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt. An Aryan Nation splinter group organized the robberies and the printing of counterfeit bills in order to finance a planned revolution against the government. This was a Neo-Nazi organization led by a young man named Bob Mathews, played here by Nicholas Hoult. They operated across the Northwest, in Washington State, Idaho, and Montana, but it was an assassination in Denver, Colorado that brought down the heat from federal law enforcement.

The movie takes us inside this insular community of racist ideologues. I like how the film portrays them as real people, instead of exaggerated villains or monsters. The notion that white people are threatened by Black and Jewish Americans is an assumption built into the lifestyle of these families, with their wives and kids, and friends—and it’s something for the kids to be taught. This is all presented with such matter of fact realism that it’s far more frightening than any more dramatic treatment.

Hoult, an English actor who up until now has been known mostly for young leading man or hero-type roles, is a revelation as the charismatic cult leader, Mathews. The way he talks and behaves with others really makes it understandable that people of like mind would follow him. A pointed contrast is made between the young Mathews and an older man who has led the Aryan Nation for years, a supposed minister waving the Bible while inveighing against threats to white purity, and played by the great character actor Victor Slezak. Mathews rejects him in favor of direct violent action. The Order’s text is a novel, and this is a real thing, called The Turner Diaries, describing the steps a white power group uses in order to start and win a race war that will defeat the American government.

The accurate portrayal of a racist militia movement makes the danger and suspense of this film very intense. There’s some great casting: Jurnee Smollett as Husk’s FBI superior, and Tye Sheridan as a local Idaho cop who first starts piecing the conspiracy together. It works as a tough, efficient crime film, but also as an act of historical memory. The Order is as stark and impressive a warning as you’re ever liable to see.