AFF ‘24: The Order Review

Some things change, while others stay the same. It’s a statement that rings true for humanity, and a saying that gains power in the context of racism in modern-day America. For all the advancements in cultural and ethnic unity, a mold of hate still resides in the country, growing from tight corners and emerging through hateful social posts, television spiels, and political campaigns.

Justin Kurzel’s newest film The Order, this year’s “Centerpiece Film” at the Austin Film Festival, observes a hate-filled racial movement in 1983 that continues to live on in modern rhetoric. Kurzel has long been a filmmaker fascinated with subjects who stew and explode while drenched in the dreary depths of their respective countries: a mass shooter in Nitram, a serial killer in The Snowtown Murders, hell, even a mad king in Macbeth. Now, working on a script from Zach Baylin (King Richard) that adapts Gary Gerhardt and Kevin Flynn’s nonfiction book “The Silent Brotherhood,” Kurzel brings his stoic view of pent-up anger to the brutal activities of a fringe white supremacist group operating in the Pacific Northwest.

Baylin’s script centers on the fictional FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law), a prototypical gruff old crime-stopper who finds himself stationed away in the small town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Law portrays Terry with an aura of a man beaten down by the job. While mostly silent in his daily chores and duties, Law’s eyes and tense mouth show a boiling violence within the agent. As his opposite, Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult) is the burgeoning figurehead for the hate group inspired by the manifesto “The Turner Diaries.” Bob is a family man and community leader; sure, it’s for a community made up of mostly racist friends and family, but Baylin’s script stresses the genuine connection Bob creates easily with people. 

The Order is a cat-and-mouse chase between the lonesome lawman and the charismatic terrorist, the tension rising as Bob’s group pulls off bank heists, recruits members, and commits assassinations. Baylin’s script covers this saga with quick pace, introducing Terry’s growing list of allies such as local Idaho cop Jamie (Tye Sheridan, Ready Player One) and fellow FBI agent Joanne (Jurnee Smollett, Lovecraft Country) along with Bob’s own group of believers and lovers. Every character, big or small, has an actor that provides a nugget of a deeper interior to their mostly generic crime genre archetypes. Jamie’s wife Kimmy (Morgan Holmstrom, Outlander), for example, is lent a heartbreaking pulse that turns her character’s “worried wife” cliche into a somewhat involving character that adds tension to Jamie’s growing involvement with a dangerous case.

Still, a bulk of the characters, particularly Terry, never rise above their broad characterizations. Law does what he can, and he does it well, delivering on Terry’s quiet sadness and violent bursts of frustration at Bob’s constant elusiveness and the FBI’s inefficiency, but the character is like any other washed up cop/detective that’s been put to screen. In the post Q&A screening, Baylin notes that Terry was an amalgamation of various agents and officers who worked the real case, so maybe the lack of specificity is an unintentional consequence of that combination.

It’s a feature that sticks out when compared to the film’s depiction of Bob, a real-life figure imbued by Hoult’s entrancing performance. The criminal becomes the film’s most interesting figure, a man of firm belief that the country must be violently taken back for the betterment of his race. Hoult delivers on Bob’s steely determination, but it’s how he plays the man when surrounded by friends and family at home that turns the character into a striking villain that nonetheless has warmth for the ones he deems deserve it.

Kurzel brings tension in the film’s action scenes, knowing when to let the camera stay attached through a bank robbery, or shift into a more frantic pace of cuts during an on-foot chase and firefight. As with his other films, there is no emotional sense of relief in any of the deaths, not even when the bad guys bite the wrong end of the bullet. Violence only pushes people towards more violence. Frequent Kurzel collaborator Adam Arkapaw utilizes his camerawork to bring a lowkey yet striking energy to The Order’s visuals, providing a subtle atmosphere of dread to the forests and ho-hum towns of the Pacific Northwest. Production designer Karen Murphy also assists in creating a lived-in look to the film’s locations and settings, pulling viewers into the shadowy backrooms of FBI briefings and terrorist meet-ups. 

Well-made and well-acted, The Order nonetheless feels like a familiar step from Kurzel. He’s always a filmmaker who can create a sense of approaching dread, and that continues here, where, even in a real-life case that has a clear ending, the tension of how far Bob’s group goes in taking back their country effectively grows as the story moves along. As with Nitram and The Snowtown Murders, the villain of this story is its most intriguing. For all its lurking modern day subtext, The Order —and Kurzel himself as a filmmaker tackling tragic real life incidents —feels diluted in what it wants to ultimately say. Does it want to be a meat-and-potatoes depiction of a real-life crime saga? Or does it want to connect ‘80s white supremacy fear tactics with modern day incidents and rhetoric? 

As the former, The Order succeeds in its mission. For the latter, even as it tinkers with nuggets of Bob’s mission ultimately bleeding into modern day white supremacy, the film never quite builds that strong connection. The lacking characterization to everyone outside of Bob creates a one-sided depth of complexity. Outside of Terry’s assholery, the side of the law is portrayed as the generic good guys. For as efficient as Baylin's script is at covering Bob and Terry’s pursuit of one another, The Order feels like a broad overview of the incident, never quite feeling like a comprehensive coverage of events and people coming into conflict with one another. 

Still, the existence of The Order speaks volumes about the current climate of today’s America. White supremacy isn’t gone. In fact, some could argue it doesn’t need to hide in secluded barn houses and homes to come to the forefront. Its rhetoric thrives on social media, television, and even in the language of powerful political figures now. From that view, Kurzel’s film doesn’t exist as a look back on simpler times. It’s a reminder of past events that disturbingly reverberate today.

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