If you've seen Oliver Stone's 1988 film Talk Radio you'll be tangentially aware of one of the subplots within Justin Kurzel's true crime thriller The Order. Stone's film was inspired by the story of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host who was targeted by a neo-Nazi group known as "The Order." As played by Marc Maron, Berg's voice is the first we hear in Kurzel's film, his words drawing the ire of a couple of white supremacists taking an ominous late night drive.
But here Berg is a very minor character, with the drama instead centred on two other figures, one real - The Order's leader Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult) - and one fictional - Terry Husk (Jude Law), an FBI agent determined to take Matthews and his operation down.
Husk stumbles upon The Order when he relocates to small town Idaho and begins to wonder if a series of local bank robberies might be connected to the white supremacist compound on the edge of town. In 1983, the notion of neo-Nazis taking such action rather than simply sitting around getting drunk and moaning about their lot in life was practically unheard of, so Husk dismisses his thoughts until a young local cop, Jamie (Tye Sheridan), expresses the same suspicions. The two men team up in a classic embittered veteran/emboldened rookie partnership, the type we find in Dirty Harry movies.
Husk is the sort of protagonist you see in '70s cop movies, one determined to make it difficult for us to like him. As his name unsubtly suggests, he's a hollowed out shell of a man. We see Husk make phone calls to his wife asking her to bring the kids out to his new home in Idaho, but we never hear a voice on the other end of the line. He's devoted to bringing Matthews to justice but never suggests he's motivated by political reasons, and we suspect that if he didn't have his job he might be the sort of man that Matthews could seduce by preying on his insecurities. When Jamie's wife Kimmy (Morgan Holmstrom) gets Husk alone, she confesses that he scares her, and he's unable, or perhaps unwilling, to provide her with any reassurances. Kimmy is Native-American, and so likely views Husk and the FBI as just as much a threat as Matthews and his Klan.
Rather than the cartoonish stereotype we usually get in portrayals of white supremacists, Hoult's Matthews is a calm, reassuring presence, one who might be considered charming if he didn't hold such noxious views. In Costa-Gavras's thriller Betrayed (released the same year as Talk Radio), Tom Berenger played a character inspired by Matthews. As essayed by the steely-eyed and square-jawed Berenger, he was the sort of man other men find sinister but some women find seductive, whereas Hoult plays him as the sort of guy you could happily have a few beers with, at least until he tries to hand you a pamphlet. In Snowtown and True History of the Kelly Gang, Kurzel has previously made Australian true crime thrillers about charismatic criminals forming gangs by putting an arm around the shoulders of broken people, and he's transferred this dynamic to his first take on America's recent history. Husk's absent family stands in contrast to Matthews, who is always surrounded by adoring hangers-on while his wife is happy to accept the presence of his pregnant girlfriend, both women gladly turning a blind eye to his deeds like mob wives dazzled by the bags of cash he frequently sets down on their kitchen tables.
With its patient storytelling, The Order resembles a product of a more mature era of Hollywood. Kurzel shuns any obvious period signifiers, which gives the story a necessary timelessness. Like the best Howard Hawks movies, his film is about men who are very good at what they do, but can only do one thing, and there's an unspoken bond that develops between Husk and his prey, like that of a Sheriff and the outlaw he's obsessed with catching. The action is Hawksian in how it breaks out in violent spurts, catching both the heroes and the audience off-guard. A gripping sequence in which Matthews and his crew hijack an armoured car is simultaneously a throwback to the stagecoach robberies of classic westerns and a reminder that we're watching an Aussie filmmaker put his Mad Max sensibilities to work.
But what's most gripping here is an arguably career-best performance by Law. With his retreating widow's peak and mustache, his Husk is a very 1980s man, like Phil Collins and Bob Hoskins mashed together and stretched on a rack. Zach Baylin's script makes Husk a largely ambiguous figure, which keeps us guessing about his thoughts right down to the closing shot, but Law subtly humanises him, making him more than simply a Dirty Harry wannabe. The aftermath of a near death encounter in which Husk's life flashes before his eyes sees Law do some incredible work. The look of horror we see on Husk's face makes us think not that he's considering all he might have lost, but rather how little he really has to lose. If men like Matthews didn't exist, men like Husk would have little to live for.
Directed by: Justin Kurzel
Starring: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, Odessa Young, Marc Maron
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