The Order ★★★½

The rise of neo-Nazism is the focus of director Justin Kurzel‘s The Order. The film follows FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) and Idaho police officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan) as they work a case involving a mysterious neo-Nazi organization known as “the Order”. Set in 1983, it moves around the Pacific Northwest with the Order responsible for a series of bank robberies, armored car heists, bombings, and counterfeiting. All of these crimes serve a greater purpose, envisioned by the Order’s leader Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), as prescribed in the fictional novel The Turner Diaries. Aiming to recruit and raise funds, they will soon begin assassinations and an eventual race war that will see all Jews and non-Whites exterminated or deported.

The Order is a startling and harrowing film, offering a thorough examination on where this kind of hatred comes from and is fostered. Opening narration from Jewish radio host Alan Berg (Marc Maron) finds him directly confronting a neo-Nazi caller, explaining that the hatred in White extremist groups is based on inadequacy. A person fails in life, then searches for someone to blame as they are unable to, as Berg says, accept that it is their own fault. A later clip from his radio show will find him adding that for those in extremist groups, they have dedicated their life to hate because their life is horrible and, thus, they seek to make everyone’s existence miserable. As Kurzel demonstrates, it is a movement that preys on (though is not exclusive to) the economically disadvantaged, insidiously slipping through the cracks to offer an explanation for why they lost their jobs, why their family is struggling, and/or why their parents before them struggled. Men like Bob Mathews are further given a purpose, an avenue to express their desires for power and to play soldier, using their toxic masculinity and White anxiety to lay waste to the environment around them. Organizations like the Order live in large compounds that host all of the men’s families, teach their children from The Turner Diaries, and lay the groundwork for the next generation of neo-Nazis. 

A line in the film in an encounter between Bob and the leader of the Aryan Nations, Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), is especially unsettling. Demanding that Bob cease building an army, Richard explains that they are perhaps 10 years away from having a real, national breakthrough as, in his mind, they will soon have White nationalists represented in Congress. Kurzel’s film in this moment and others paints a larger picture than just a series of crimes and one White nationalist organization in 1983 Idaho. The battle started before the events of this film and continues to this day with The Order connecting it all to the January 6, 2021 insurrection on the US Capitol. At times, it can play like a horror film, especially as Bob Mathews delivers a speech in the neo-Nazi Church and rallies everyone around him into a fervor. It is masterfully delivered by Nicholas Hoult (who is terrific throughout), a chilling scene that finds Kurzel and DP Adam Arkapaw shooting Hoult in medium and close-up shots before moving about the room, watching as everybody begins to shout along with him. He speaks of this land being their birthright, owed to them and one they will now have to fight to take back from Jews and people of color. It is the ethos of this movement. The Order draws a line between the Order and the Aryan Nations’ view on military action and a race war, but it never shies away from demonstrating the destructive, hateful, and anti-American rhetoric that defines these groups, as well as the ways in which their own rhetoric and that of those before them inspires them into bloodshed and horror inflicted upon innocent people.

The Order adds to this examination with a strong, if conventional, crime thriller story. Kurzel is extremely capable of wringing suspense and tension out of these events. One can feel the ramifications of Terry, Jamie, and lead FBI agent Joanne Carney’s (Jurnee Smollett) work, which adds natural intensity and emotion. The robbery scenes are thrilling and masterfully choreographed. This side of the film, though, is especially interesting for the characters. Terry Husk is a beleaguered veteran FBI agent seeking a place where he can find some quiet work. He ends up in Idaho and finds anything but. He is aging, worn out from years of seeing the horrible underbelly of society. A scar on his chest hints at a heart surgery and is a sign of the wear-and-tear that his body has taken. He has a wife and two daughters who are not with him, and he bristles anytime somebody asks when they will join him. Discussions over kids clearly hit a sore spot for him with the feelings of inadequacy and personal failure etched onto Law’s face. Law gives a great performance and really anchors the film. The nosebleeds that Terry gets become a great detail for the character, one that Law leans into well as an unwanted reminder of his advancing age (he blames them on pills he takes) that often undercuts him during intense moments, most notably in a great jail cell scene. This is a man who still retains all of the individuality and cowboyish approach of his youth, but the scars of time have rendered him into a man who can no longer do it alone.

Terry and Bob strike up a fascinating hunter-and-prey dynamic. Crime films often lean on the fatalistic pull between cop and criminal and The Order is no exception, even though these two men rarely interact face-to-face. It is only well into the film that Terry actually even learns Bob’s identity, at that point realizing that he had seen him before. Although Terry is, of course, the cop in this scenario, it is often Bob doing the hunting. On a hunting trip in the woods, Terry is focused on a buck that has simply wandered into the open. He has it in his cross-hairs, at which point the film cuts back to show Bob lurking in the woods with Terry in his cross-hairs. Neither take the shot, but this inversion of the usual cop-and-criminal formula is emblematic of the film’s overall portrayal of the cops being on the right trail, but they are slow, out-maneuvered, and out-gunned. How long it takes them to even realize who they are pursuing, the FBI’s overall slackness in following up leads, and the local police department’s blind eye to the group’s development, are all a perfect storm for the Order to be able to gain considerable momentum. Even in the end, there is no satisfaction. Bob will meet his end, sure, but the larger movement he was a part of is still in motion and the guard-rails in place to stop this from even starting were proven wholly inadequate.

Upon finding the Order’s compound, the FBI agents and Jamie all move in, observing the wall of hate that they have erected. Joanne stares up in horror, holding her hand to her face with a tear rolling down her cheek. This is a story with details and a wide-reaching implication that can have the same effect on the audience. This is just one example and as Kurzel makes clear, the cops here may somewhat succeed, but it is just one cell of a gigantic organism, a festering cancer on the nation that has continued to grow. The Order is a captivating crime thriller with great performances from Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult and strong characters, but it is first and foremost a harrowing portrait of a sick nation, one where hate and bloodshed has become all too commonplace.