Jude Law Battles Neo-Nazis in Real-Life Thriller ‘The Order’

Modern domestic terrorism may have reached its peak with the January 6, 2021, insurrection in which members of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other white-nationalist groups attempted to aid Donald Trump’s quest to overthrow the presidential election, but its roots run far deeper.

The Order, Jason Kurzel’s unnerving based-on-real-events drama, recounts one of the earliest skirmishes in the battle between law enforcement and hate groups intent on sowing civil disorder, focusing on an early 1980s organization that sought to instigate a race war. Featuring a standout performance by Jude Law as an FBI agent determined to prevent a tragic massacre, it’s a history lesson that compensates for a lack of breakneck thrills with ominous timeliness.

As with Kurzel’s prior true-crime effort, 2021’s Nitram, The Order—premiering on Aug. 31 at the Venice Film Festival, after which it’ll appear at the Toronto International Film Festival—is a story about disaffected young white men traversing empty landscapes stained with hate and violence that fester and spread in the dusty sunlight. Moreover, it’s about children whose corrosive hearts and minds are unpredictable to strangers and unfathomable to parents, such that when Law’s Terry Husk visits the home of a suspected neo-Nazi, the young man’s father laments, “You think you have control over who they'’e going to be, but the truth is, you don’t. You try to protect them—that’s the best you can do. But you can't live their life for them.”

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