‘The Order’ Review Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult in an Explosive Crime Drama About the White Supremac

[Music] [Applause] [Music] there's a scene in the order a riveting an explosive docudrama about the dawn of the modern American white supremacist movement in the 1980s that creeps you out in a very eye-opening way two leaders of the movement are meeting on an isolated country road in Idaho one of them Richard Butler Victor slazak is the white nationalist who founded the Aryan Nations the Neo-Nazi cult that has its compound nearby he's a racist extremist but he has the demeanor of a courtly preacher and he's consciously political about the growth of his movement the other man Bob Matthews Nicholas Holt is a former follower of butlers who has split off from him all because he thinks the Aryan nation's movement isn't extreme enough Matthews wants an armed Uprising now and the insurrectionary band of Ruffians he leads called the order he named them after the white supremacist revolutionaries in the Turner Diaries are basically a small scruffy band of terrorists they bom porn theaters and synagogues they put on black ski masks and tote Mac 10 submachine guns to rob banks and Brinks trucks they want the money for themselves but they're also funding an army to rise up against the United States government one brings Heist Nets them $3.6 million in an early scene we see them kill one of their own In Cold Blood the FBI led by a Dar veteran agent named Terry husk Jude Law has been sniffing around so Butler is meeting with Matthews to warn him that his violent tactics are a huge mistake as Butler explains their movement can't get bogged down in criminality if they do it right he says within 10 years they'll have people in the House of Representatives and the Senate but Matthews won't listen he's committed to his idea of an apocalyptic Revolution the double barreled disturbance of the scene is this Butler though off by a few years was exactly right about how the mainstreaming of his movement was going to work in that sense he represents a far more dangerous threat to America than Bob Matthews does Matthews by contrast is a reckless sociopath his string of crime which as the movie shows us will culminate in the murder of the denver-based Jewish talk radio host Alan Berg played by Mark Marin is nothing short of insane but what that means is that Butler a seeding American Nazi is the voice of moderation here that's enough to make your head spin and your stomach a little queasy the order written by Zack Balin and directed by Justin celle whose Nitram chillingly dramatized the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania is at once a supremely intelligent docu drama about the rise of the white supremacist movement and a riveting Crime Story kurelle Works in a classical way shooting the movie The cinematography is by Adam arapa with a dynamic feel for the beauty and desolation of the rural mountain Landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and for the momentto moment Logistics of how amateur criminals move through space the film is full of robberies stakeouts shootouts interrogations and other Hallmarks of the police procedure it is quite often grippingly suspenseful yet it's never suspenseful because kurelle is hyping the action the order is rigorously detailed in its authenticity when the FBI LED almost at random into this case mostly because husk the first one onto it is reeling from a broken marriage and has been assigned to a one-man office in the nothing town of Kur delain kicks off its investigation the bureau's tactics at first May strike us as a bit sleepy or even borderline inept but that's only because the movie is staying true to what the FBI is a crew of all two human agents not law enforcement Supermen who in the days before high technology had to move one step at time Jude Law POI and downcast with a weary mustache plays Terry as an honest agent who is also a broken man with his wife and two daughters estranged his job is all that's holding him together and this could well be the most searing lived in performance of laws care career his Terry who teams up with a local officer Tai Sheridan looking as clean-cut as a Boy Scout is a good cop because he's full of bitter hard one knowledge about how criminals operate he spent time in New York chasing mobsters and one of the thoughts he shares it's part of the movie's Insight is that there's a continuity between members of the mob the KKK and now the order the way he puts it is they all have a cause but they're really out for themselves we see that in Nicholas Holt's powerfully convincing performance as Bob Matthews Holt looks just like the real Matthews and if the trick in playing a man full of racist hate is not to caricature him to show us the humanity of everyday evil the actor brings that off in an utterly disarming way he shows us that Matthew's beliefs are total that he's living within them but that they've given him a fervor that makes him a scary charismatic Thug ringleader Matthews turns up in the congregation for one of Butler's sermons and when he stands to make his own plea for why the white Power Revolution needs to happen now before it's too late Hol makes us see how righteously he believes that he sweeps the crowd up into his death Cult of ennobling danger Matthews is actually a rather scarless fellow he and his wife Debbie Alice and Oliver have adopted children but because he wants to carry on his line he has also impregnated his mistress Zilla Odessa young he has done it with the same entitl that 10 years later would Mark the transgressions of David Kesh but when Matthews fixes his stare on an enemy or on one of his followers who he thinks might be disloyal his eyes shine with a Killer's Edge