Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Order’ on VOD, A Jude Law Vs. Nicholas Hoult Thriller About The Pursuit Of Violent 1980s White Supremacists 

If you’ve been enjoying Jude Law as Jod Na Nawood in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew but thought “What he really needs is a big honkin’ mustache and buried trauma,” then smash that VOD button on The Order, in which Law plays a veteran FBI Special Agent driven to stop Nicholas Hoult’s upstart neo-Nazi. Directed by Justin Kurzel and written by Zach Baylin, The Order is based on true events – Hoult physically resembles the real Robert “Bob” Mathews as he combines menace with the extremist’s documented charm – and pits Law and Jurnee Smolett’s federal agents against Mathews’ group, which terrorized the 1980s Pacific Northwest as they planned a white supremacist overthrow of the US government. Tye Sheridan, Alison Oliver, Marc Maron, and Odessa Young also star.    

THE ORDER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: When Terry Husk (Law) arrives in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho in 1982, it’s to take over the FBI field office there, which is basically empty. The entire area is kinda empty – it’s populated more with fliers promoting white power idealogy than people. And that’s key, as Husk, a skilled but burned-out veteran agent with 26 years’ experience chasing mafiosos and other criminals, to the detriment of his absent wife and daughters, begins an investigation into the supremacist groups that operate in the region. With local insight from sheriff’s deputy Jamie Brown (Sheridan), and support from his colleague, fellow FBI vet Joanne Carney (Smollett), Husk works to uncover the link between a string of bank robberies and pipe bomb explosions and an Aryan Nation splinter group led by Bob Mathews (Hoult). What Mathews is building goes beyond criminal chaos.

Husk and Jamie visit the area’s main Aryan compound outside of town, where little kids give the Sieg Heil salute and the flag of the American Colonies flies alongside Swastikas. They consider the twisted ideology promoted in The Turner Diaries, a white nationalist novel that promotes domestic terror and a racial reckoning known as “the day of the rope.” (In real life, The Turner Diaries also inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.) And they eventually land on Mathews as their main suspect, who broke off from the Aryan Nation, named his own extremist outfit after the one in the book – The Order – and seems to be committing robberies to finance the violent realization of his neo-Nazi beliefs.

“We are now in a state of war, “ Mathews tells his core group of followers, as they print counterfeit cash and plan elaborate armored car heists. “It’s time to reclaim the land which was promised to our fathers.” His plan to do this involves targeting a fiery Jewish talk radio host – Marc Maron is great here as Alan Berg – and taunting Husk and the feds as they continue to circle. The Order has a lived-in early-eighties look – as lived-in as the mustached, often grim-faced Jude Law as Terry Husk – and tension to burn as Mathews’ robberies grow more violent and the investigation mounts. Mathews will justify any action for his cause; within it, even his relationships with wife Debbie (Oliver) and mistress Zillah (Young) are transactional. “In every revolution,” Mathews says, “somebody has to fire the first shot.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Spike Lee’s Academy Award-winning 2018 film BlackKkKlansman, set in 1970s Colorado, shares some of the visual aesthetic of The Order, in addition to following John David Washington’s Black police officer as he investigates the Colorado Springs chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Daniel Radcliffe and Toni Collette were FBI agents battling racial extremists in the 2016 film Imperium. And the activities of Bob Mathews and The Order inspired other films, including Talk Radio – Eric Bogosian’s character was based on Alan Berg, played by Maron in The Order – and the 1988 thriller Betrayed.      

Performance Worth Watching: Toss-up! You’re bound to be grabbed by what Jude Law’s doing here as FBI Special Agent Terry Husk – Law weighs down his character’s features with burnout and belief equally. But opposite the agent is Nicholas Hoult as Bob Mathews, who speaks of racial terror and government overthrow with the cadence and shining blue eyes of a motivational speaker, if a motivational speaker wore a pistol jammed in the waistband of his 501s. 

Memorable Dialogue: As Bob Mathews and his group conduct increasingly more brazen robberies, Terry Husk points to their larger agenda. “They’ve got a plan. They got $250K – that’s a war chest. For what?” 

Sex and Skin: None.

Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Our Take: There’s a wonderful and ultimately foreboding texture to The Order, which builds tension by establishing the look and feel of the 1980s – the film has a fantastic eye for light, and era-specific cars and trucks – while emphasizing that the philosophies espoused by Nicholas Hoult’s Bob Mathews still thrive in certain corners of American society today. Jude Law is incredibly watchable, too, building traits into Terry Husk – the way he walks, the way he holds his revolver; Terry’s quiet solitude in the wilderness, which he longs to show his daughters while he knows he never will – and once a kind of competition develops between Mathews and Husk, as the extremist becomes more aggressive and the fed neglects his own health and safety to nab him, The Order takes on an obsessive quality that makes you wonder: who’s gonna survive this thing?   

Our Call: Stream It. The Order is a tense thriller with a strong sense of place and even stronger performances from Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult at its center, with support from a strong cast and some thoughts to consider about the history and currency of racist belief systems and violent extremism in America.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.