“I’m tired of living in unprecedented times”, I mutter to myself for the tenth time this week as I flip through TikTok news snippets. Yeah, I’m sure we’re all feeling it lately; the world seems to be devolving into too many chaotic situations at once. It’s moments like these when I must remind myself—most of history isn’t unprecedented, it’s cyclical. All of these events, both good and bad, have happened before. Even when I think I’m escaping the world by losing myself in a piece of media, I’m reminded of this. This film serves that purpose.
The Order is the latest film, based on a true story, that educated me on an event I had no idea that happened in 1983-84. Jude Law stars as Terry Husk, an FBI agent that is working to prove that a recent string of armed robberies and counterfeiting crimes can be traced back to an extremist white supremist group in the Pacific Northwestern US. In the meantime, we get a deep look into said group, simply called “The Order”, as well as its charismatic leader, Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult). Husk must work to quickly stop “The Order”, as they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of building an army and sewing chaos and racially driven violence upon society.
As I’ve said, “The Order” was a very sharp reminder of the extremist ideals and sheer violence that certain groups are willing to carry out. While much of the action was focused on Agent Husk and the FBI, we see an equal amount from the point of view of Bob Mathews. I thought those parts were very interesting, as uncomfortable as they make me to watch. This film captures very well how an enthusiastic, charismatic leader such as Bob Mathews can incite the flames of hatred and inspire people to do some reprehensible things. Once again, Nicholas Hoult proves he’s not just good at playing villains, but a wide range of them.
Of course, the other half of the film is dedicated to Husk’s FBI investigation into this group. Now I love a good crime thriller film, especially if it’s based on a true story. And this one certainly made an attempt to give us the “highlights” of the investigation over the course of the year it took place, so we can see the progression of how they eventually cornered them. However, despite some very good effort, the film did drag a bit in pacing. While the quiet, calm, mood establishing scenes are very nice, I do feel like they were a bit overused in this case. I can’t quite blame them for all of the glorious establishing shots that were taken—after all it takes place in one of one prettiest parts of the U.S. Indeed, this film was overall very well shot and framed, probably one of its strongest suits. But beautiful scenery is not exactly what we watch a crime movie for, is it?
Overall, while the investigation portion of the film didn’t offer us anything new or groundbreaking in the genre (besides some pretty decent acting on Jude Law’s part), it did effectively show us how fast a group based off of violence and hate can gain power, and how easy it can be to fall into such a mindset. If anything The Order at least educated me on a specific circumstance of this that happened that I had no idea about (it was a bit before my time), so the film succeeds in that, but I fear rewatchability suffers due to the pacing.
