"Twenty-six years I've done this job. Every monster, every klansman, they've all got one thing in common: they're all trying to blame someone else."
If you want to close out 2024 or start 2025 with a thriller that's as troubling as it is tense, then The Order is for you.
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It's based on the non-fiction book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, and after watching you'll want to dig a lot deeper into the 1980s case at its centre.
The director is the Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, a master in bringing real-life events to the screen - he previously made Snowtown, True History of the Kelly Gang, and Nitram.
Here, he has chosen a tight-as-a-drum script about another true story, cast superbly (including rising Irish star Alison Oliver), juxtaposed damaged people with the beauty of nature, and delivered a finished film that belongs in the same company as The French Connection, Serpico, The Parallax View, and any other hardboiled movies you want to mention.
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In one of his standout performances, Jude Law plays Terry Husk, an FBI agent who has relocated to a bureau outpost in Idaho as he tries to get away from the undercover work that has consumed him and wrecked his family.
It doesn't last.
Soon after arriving, Husk finds his new obsession: a local white supremacist group that he believes is responsible for counterfeiting, bank robberies, and bombings as part of its manifesto.
Their leader, Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult with some of his finest work), has severed his ties with another neo-Nazi group and is recruiting for, in his words, "putting words into action" - across the US.
"It just felt like a piece of work that needed to be made now. It's always interesting looking back, but it's always interesting finding a piece from the past that has some relative relationship to the present day."
So said Law during The Order's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, and it's a chillingly accurate primer for this superior exercise in propulsive storytelling from director Kurzel and screenwriter Zach Baylin (King Richard, Creed III).
Indeed, for such a timely and important film, it was a shock to hear Baylin recently tell Backstory Magazine on YouTube that they had "a really hard time getting the movie made", amid budget and time constraints, before all the pieces ultimately fell into place in such a powerful way here.
Year after year, so many must-sees fall through the cracks due to the sheer volume of options on offer - and budget and time constraints on the other side of the screen. The Order is the latest to deserve a better fate, but there's a lot more to it than that: there really is a danger if this film isn't seen by as many people as possible.
The Order is in selected cinemas from Friday.
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