Starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult, and directed by Justin Kurzel, tense thriller The Order is one of 2024’s last must-see films. Our review:
Director Justin Kurzel has a certain way of depicting death. Where most filmmakers might serve up an aesthetised, cinematic version of what dying looks and feels like, Kurzel captures it in what feels unsettlingly real: the shock, the gasping for air, the sensation of drowning in blood. It’s something he brought to his startling debut Snowtown, and continued into his later work, whether it’s his Technicolor adaptation of Macbeth (2015) or his disturbing 2021 drama, Nitram.
Like much of Kurzel’s earlier work, The Order, written by Zach Baylin, is based on real events: the FBI’s hunt for a white supremacist militia group in the early 1980s. Between 1983 and 1984, the group – which called itself The Order – waged a terror campaign across Colorado and Washington, bombing buildings, robbing banks and carrying out racially-motivated assassinations.
In Kurzel’s telling of the story, it’s the fictional middle-aged FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) on the group’s trail, aided by smalltown deputy Bowden (Tye Sheridan) and fellow agent, Carney (Jurnee Smollet). His target is Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), a charismatic leader who’s using the cash from an assortment of robberies to bankroll his growing army of embittered, otherwise directionless young men.
Kurzel’s direction is electrifying. By turns a procedural thriller – with Law and Bowden’s investigation resembling the best parts of TV’s True Detective in places – and an unsettling drama about extremism, The Order is impeccably constructed and superbly paced. (Kurzel’s regular cinematographer, Adam Arkapaw, also worked on True Detective, which partly explains the visual parallels.)
The performances are equally striking. Law, his face lined, his eyes bloodshot and his tense mouth fringed with a moustache, twists his movie star charisma into a jaded and somewhat solitary protagonist. We’ve seen ageing cop protagonists like his before, but like just about everything else in the film, it’s served up with a conviction that makes it feel genuine in the moment.
Similarly, Hoult – an actor whose skill appears to be growing with each passing year – uses his ice blue eyes and fresh-faced looks to create a singularly disturbing antagonist. With his white shirts and blue jeans, he resembles nothing less than a Risky Business or The Color Of Money-era Tom Cruise, which makes his skills as an orator and manipulator all the more disturbing.
Although set 40 years ago, The Order has considerable relevance in 2024. Bob’s group treats a racist bit of literature as its bible and how-to manual – a step-by-step guide to building an army, staging an insurrection and taking over the United States. At one stage in recent history, it felt as though racism and extremism were the preserve of odd little groups of people in backwater places; there was a myth that inclusivity, democracy and tolerance had won, and that all those dreadful isms had been pushed to near extinction. The rise of far-right populism, January 6 and the re-election of Donald Trump have well and truly exploded that myth, making The Order as urgent and instructive as it is tense and thrilling.
The sickness, The Order suggests, has been there all along, festering and growing. Kurzel’s film details a horrifying yet comparatively small skirmish in an ongoing war – one that those on the side of decency and sanity may be in danger of losing. Early in The Order, the minister of an Aryan Nation church asks Bob to be patient, because there will soon be people of their persuasion in Congress and the Senate. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this has since come to pass.
Superbly scripted and acted, with its contrasting scenes of investigation and plotting punctuated with stark jabs of violence, The Order is an uncompromising yet vital film. With its 70s thriller stylings and unsettling tone, I do fear that it’s one of those that will slip through the cracks – not unlike David Mackenzie’s Hell Or High Water, one of the best films of the 2010s. Like most of Kurzel’s films, it’s unsparing in its tone, and withering in its analysis of humanity’s darkest instincts. One voice in the film, appealing for calm, suggests that “our better instincts will prevail.”
I’m not sure that Kurzel agrees with that sentiment.
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The Order is in UK cinemas from the 27th December.
