“In every revolution, someone has to fire the first shot.”
The Order centers on one of the most prolific terrorist groups of the 21st century. It is a story that seems timely and relevant without going too far into overblown sermonizing or propaganda.
It’s a movie that is simultaneously gripping and riveting while also disturbing and uncompromising in its approach to the material. Some audiences will no doubt think it’s propaganda, but for me, it’s a film so committed to showing us a corner of American history that needs to be avoided.
Jude Law stars as Terry Husk, an FBI agent in Idaho who investigates a series of bank and armored car robberies and counterfeiting in 1983 and 1984. He discovers that these activities are all connected to a white supremacist cult known as The Order.
Nicholas Hoult stars as Bob Mathews, the charismatic leader of The Order who wants to take their group to the government and eradicate them in the hopes of creating a civil war. Hoult is thoroughly convincing as Mathews because he chooses to portray this individual as someone who has a ruthlessly aggressive mission but also feels a sense of loyalty and protection to his commune.
Hoult’s Mathews lives with other members who are racist and anti-Semitic to the core. They use The Turner Diaries as their Bible to navigate their paths to supremacy. There are even disturbing sequences, such as dedicating a newborn baby in the hopes of indoctrinating it. Most viewers will see this as a form of radicalization, but for these characters, it’s a ritual.
Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett co-star as a small-town cop and a fellow FBI agent who join Husk on his quest to eliminate The Order. The great thing the movie allows them to do is give them weight and enough screen time so that they’re not characters who pop up for a scene or two but rather get several effective moments that help advance the plot.
The setup of The Order reminded me of something close to the Branch Davidians, a scary brainwashing cult that believes their time for dominance is on the horizon and the government is waiting for its every move.
Some audiences who go into The Order might perceive those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th as a parallel between what The Order tried to do and where the latter succeeded.
The movie makes no apologies for attacking this material with a sense of plausibility and urgency in nearly every scene. Rather than giving us gratuitous violence, it spends much more time setting up the whos, the hows, and the whys of its structure and characters.
The Order is skillfully acted and directed, and it presents a dark ambition that will hopefully never be realized.
Grade: A-
(Rated R for some strong violence and language throughout.)
