This uncompromising detective cat-and-mouse thriller weaves in terrifying history, visceral action, and career-best work from many of its actors. Jude Law plays a character who deviates from other enigmatic detectives through his displays of emotion and powerful arc. His lawman goes toe-to-toe with white supremacist cult leader Bob Matthews. Nicholas Hoult is riveting as Matthews, playing a charismatic figure who recruits by acting as a brotherly figure to his Order, but has a deeply frightening set of ideals. The film most importantly is uninteresting in mystifying this man, rather showing him down-to-Earth to allow us to interact with him as a family man and a leader to others, and show us the ways these terrorist cults manage to expand. His deeply buried messianic complex is also fascinating, and the way he sees every conflict as a minor inconvenience in the way of his inevitable achievement of his goal. Jurnee Smollett also has some of the most memorable acting moments in any of her films, and Tye Sheridan is very strong too.
What makes The Order resonate beyond the thrills of having to put an end to crime, which we’ve seen plenty before, is it’s ability to get under your skin by highlighting unexpected parallels between the past and present. The goals of the Order are genuinely terrifying because we know this kind of evil too well, and have seen more and more of it rising across America’s history. Furthermore, the movie also contemplates America’s foundations, which left seeds in the ground for armed insurrection. Kurzel expertly directs the changes these people endure and the violence that plagues rural America even in the 1980s, and the score also elevated this crime film where the game of whether or not the bad guys will be caught is not nearly the whole story.
4/5
Review by: Gal Balaban