Justin Kurzel’s The Order opens with a sound familiar to podcast aficionados: a Marc Maron monologue. Deploying a slightly more nasally voice to embody the late Denver talk radio host Alan Berg, Maron delivers a searing broadside against far-right agitators as “too inept to be in the world” and thus “get by on the curtailing of others’ enjoyment.” Zach Baylin’s script uses the shock jock as The Order’s equivalent to a Greek chorus, loudly screaming its condemnation of anti-Semitism as exhibited by the eponymous domestic terrorist group.
Mercifully, this isn’t the extent of political dialogue in The Order—especially given the recent lack of efficacy in simply trying to yell “Nazis bad” to stop the rise of the far right. The version of white separatism on display here is less alarming because of signifiers like skinheads and swastikas. Rather, it’s terrifying because the film clarifies just how many of the group’s orthodoxies and cultural narratives have filtered into the mainstream of America’s right wing.
The Order illuminates the pipeline from economic insecurity and racial anxiety into outright white nationalism without casting a sympathetic eye toward the group’s tenets. For individuals reeling without purpose or stability, their warped notions of the founders’ love of indomitable individualism and fear of tyrannical government control provide a philosophical framework. The film situates the appeal of this neo-fascist group not as antithetical to the country’s founding principles but as a devious perversion of its mythology.
Without creating a false equivalency, this true-life tale, based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s nonfiction book The Silent Brotherhood, bakes this duality into its very structure by foiling two men on opposite sides of the law against each other. Each sees themselves as the true fulfillment of America’s ideals, albeit from different archetypal perspectives. Kurzel allows their stories to operate on parallel archetypal tracks before they must collide in a burst of gunfire.
On the side of the law, there’s Jude Law as Terry Husk, an F.B.I. agent new to the Pacific Northwest. Out east, he’s helped bust up groups ranging from organized crime like the Cosa Nostra to hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Since he’s estranged from his family, Husk has the time and energy to throw himself into the mystery of bank robberies and bombings plaguing the region. Local law enforcement—noble young cop Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan) excepting—are all blind to the obvious reality of the perpetrators due to their familiarity. The Order is a “nuisance,” they admit, “but they mostly keep to themselves.”
The loose collective of white identitarians finds a new generation of leadership in their ranks as Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler fails to inspire adherents with his preacher-like solemnity. Instead, the Order begins to fall in line behind an outlaw who can make a more cohesive rhetorical appeal to collective solidarity. That man is the rabble-rousing Bob Matthews, embodied with electric intensity by Nicholas Hoult. He offers a sense of community and fraternity to fellow disaffected men to join his cause, only to weaponize their affection to commit crimes that help fund their planned revolution against the government.
Between his slick mullet, washboard abs, and cocksure confidence, Bob looks like a poster child for the stereotypical American rebel. He’s an outgrowth of familiar iconography, which makes his ability to charm with quips about the government being the real cult all the more chilling. Hoult brings a dynamite, disturbing magnetism to the role that proves aptly discomforting.
Law’s gruff lawman holds his own on screen, but the journey of a stoic sheriff called upon to save a town from peril is well-trod genre territory. Baylin’s script renders him primarily a laconic figure bought into his outsider status, and Kurzel mostly lets him simmer silently. The two men converge on several occasions in The Order, ranging from casual conversations exchanging loaded pleasantries to an overt mirroring of their positions in the visual schema of cinematographer Adam Arkapaw. The film more effectively undercuts Bob’s authority by placing him in such contexts where he’s seen as a misguided man rather than a malevolent monster.
The dynamic of their dichotomy serves as the basis for a sturdy, if not sensational, crime drama. The Order stands out among bank robber films primarily through the fervent fanaticism of its villains, although this evil lacks the punch of Kurzel’s early Australian works like The Snowtown Murders. He’s more skilled at visualizing violence as a primal, physical masculine urge rather than an intellectual construct, as his previous work Nitram also demonstrated.
Yet the events chronicled in the film represent one of the last times in which the theoretical and the tangible remained separate when it comes to white nationalist terror in America. The Order doesn’t end with the destruction of the eponymous group. Rather, it draws a direct line to further attacks like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the January 6 insurrection. The threat hasn’t subsided, just changed forms—and so, too, should the response of those committed to upholding a multiracial polity. Polemics are no longer enough.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
