Given how significantly Hollywood was involved within the 2024 presidential election, every new release within the foreseeable future will be intertwined with the politics of the major American political parties. Many of this year’s major awards contenders are judged on whether they feel “relevant” during a time of divisiveness, while blockbusters and studio fare offer a form of escapism. This discrepancy doesn’t just speak to the polarity of American democracy; it’s also indicative of the relatively slim wiggle room between the supposedly “important” prestige fare and shlock that’s intended to satisfy the masses.
The Order doesn’t fall into either category. While it debuted to mildly positive reviews at the Venice International Film Festival, the film’s not likely to catch the same “Oscar buzz” like Anora and Conclave. The Order’s about important subject material, and it isn’t toothless. Based on a true story, the film stars Jude Law as the FBI agent Terry Husk, who tracked down a white supremacist sect known as “The Order” in 1983. Opposite him is Nicholas Hoult as Bob Mathews, the neo-Nazi extremist that led the group’s activities in Washington.
Hollywood’s loathe to openly tackle race relations, as it’s likely the “insights” of one generation will feel extremely regressive within a relatively short amount of time. In the Heat of the Night took home the Academy Award for Best Picture, as the thought of two police officers of opposite races working together was seen as groundbreaking; just recently, Green Book won the same trophy by confining the history of American race relations to a simple-minded buddy road movie. Although these two films are vastly different in terms of tone and execution, they share the same message of “Why can’t we all get along?”
Law drops any of the charisma he usually permeates in favor of playing a reclusive shell of a man who’s beaten down by years of witnessing violence. However, the revelation of the film is the unsettling performance by Hoult, who has lined up an impressive year for himself thanks to his roles in Juror #2 and Nosferatu. Hoult characterizes Matthews as a family man whose hatred runs within his veins. Among the most disturbing moments in the film involves Matthews reading a white supremacy handbook to his son in the same way a children’s novel might be read aloud.
The Order avoids the hurdle of feeling out-of-touch by completely isolating its narrative. There’s little background given about Husk, as he could theoretically represent any FBI agent who was sent to investigate this group. Husk is an American, but the casting of a veteran British actor like Law in the role gives him an aura of “otherness,” that suggests he’s completely in over his head. Although it’s initially the similarities within a series of local bank robberies that draw him to the case, Husk is faced with the sinking realization that the America he once thought he knew is completely absent in Matthews’ world.
The smartest decision that Kurzel made was not treating The Order as an action film. While it begins with an exhilarating bank robbery scene that feels lifted straight from the filmography of Michael Mann, each set piece features enough visceral destruction to remind viewers that actions have consequences. The most shocking revelation that Husk makes isn’t that there’s a cabal of white separatists planning a violent insurgency, but that the existence of “The Order” is an open secret. None of the resources that the FBI oversee will be effective if such a sizable chunk of the population is willing to ignore what’s going on.
Kurzel also didn’t directly invoke recent events as a point of comparison. A commonality within recent historical films has been the use of narrative framing that inspires a direct correlation to a specific controversy; Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman incorporated footage of the Charlottesville riots to explore a Ku Klux Klan attack in the 1970s, and Steven Spielberg drew parallels to the Trump administration in his Pentagon Papers journalism drama The Post. While these films succeeded in making their messages evident to even the most passive viewer, The Order is examining a subject that doesn’t have an easy solution. Kurzel’s a smart enough filmmaker to recognize that he doesn’t need to hold the viewers’ hands, and convince them why they should care. The suggestion is that those that don’t find themselves disturbed by The Order are part of the problem.
Kurzel’s an interesting choice as a director for this material, as his background is mostly within genre fiction. Although there’s a variety within the gangster thriller (The True History of the Kelly Gang), video game adaptation (Assassin’s Creed), and historical epic (Macbeth) that he directed, each of his films addressed the cyclical nature of violence. Justice doesn’t exist if those who seek it are driven by personal motivations. An attempt at revenge is doomed to fail, as the perceived victim is bound to return the violence with an even more vengeful response.
Kurzel isn’t as articulate in showcasing the banality of evil as Martin Scorsese or David Fincher, but there’s an underlying suggestion of bleakness that ensures that the downbeat tone of his work doesn’t feel like a gimmick. The Order doesn’t attempt to condense the white supremacy crisis into a single event, but the fact that this story was relatively unheard of prior to the film’s release is telling.
