Justin Kurzel is terrified about the state of the world. He’s terrified about the impact of violence from those who inflict it upon society, others, and themselves. He’s terrified of how easily the path along the history of violence can be followed and picked up by those who see evil as a form of leverage, control, and domination. What terrifies Justin Kurzel the most is how violence has found a comfortable place within society and has been normalised to the point of desensitisation, becoming a routine aspect of our daily lives in the process.
That terror is evident within unsettling works like Nitram, a film which acted as a nauseating reminder of how excoriating and societally shifting the act of gun violence can be, and his latest thriller The Order, the dramatised true story of Bob Matthews, a member of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, following his efforts to engage in acts of domestic terrorism in the United States of America. For the Australian born director, exploring violence through narrative storytelling on film has been a constant aspect of his work, yet it’s with Nitram and The Order that Kurzel’s tangible terror over the current state of the world is most powerfully realised resulting in cinematic panic attacks that are designed to shake the world into some form of action.
Guiding the panic attack that is The Order is Jude Law’s Terry Husk, an FBI agent looking to pace himself into retirement by investigating the increasingly violent bank robberies that are disrupting the remote, quiet town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Wearing a perpetual five o’clock shadow and carrying well over his allowed baggage weight under his eyes, on paper Husk is your stock standard, lone wolf law officer doing ‘one last job’ before sailing off into the sunset. Husk suffers from regular blood noses which drips dark claret down his shirtfront as the internal rot of his seething disgust at the state of America finally seeps out. Law is an assured actor who steadily immerses himself into the hollowing existence of Husk (a name that carries the metaphorical weight it deserves) and in doing so, he conjures the shell of a man who should be reconnecting with his distanced family but is instead left to hunt Nicholas Hoult’s charming and chilling family man Bob Matthews.
In an initial pivotal comparison point, we see Husk existing in a world of rooms and enclosed corridors, nature and sunlight a distant thought, all the while Matthews and his building brood of women and children spend time in nature, living off and with the land. They are living a version of the American dream; all the while Husk and his fellow law enforcement officers are bleeding themselves dry to keep that same dream safe. Kurzel questions the value of this continued labour effort from the police, essaying the impacts of the stress and mental toll of their work as if they’re washing their hands with rocks when all that remains is more blood and pain.
Matthews’ sect of the Aryan Nation detached itself from the National Alliance, citing the reasoning that the Alliance had strayed from its vision of white separatism. To establish themselves as their own entity, Matthews and his recruits would rob adult bookstores and theatres, netting them minor monetary gains and leading them to turn to larger areas like banks. The adult shops still featured in their exploits, yet instead of being robbed, they would act as sites of distraction with Matthews sending a recruit to blow up the store to lure the police so they could rob the bank without interference from the law. As with previous Kurzel fare, these pockets of violence explode with a furious, cruel energy that ensures that the visceral impact of each bullet is tangible and that the Nazi-fueled hate and drive for power is palpable.
Philip Granger’s middle road Sheriff Loftlin employs his societal judgement of the destruction of the adult shops, treating them as minor disturbances rather than a sign of bigger things to come. Husk engages with the local police station, recognising some kind of social hope in officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), a youthful cop who quietly navigates change through the stubbornly archaic precinct which operates on a rudimentary ‘business as usual’ mindset, and in doing so, takes a backseat approach to dealing with the rising threat of neo-Nazi’s in the region as if their present criminal state is a sign that they mean no wider harm.
For Husk, Bowen exists as someone who he might be able to shape into the man he simply could not become; someone who is less hot-headed and more pragmatic than he is. That viewpoint is one that, as a person of colour, Bowen’s wife, Kimmy (a brief, yet impactful turn from Morgan Holmstrom), can see right through and as such she has a clear understanding of the rising threat that her community is facing, all the while the white members of society stand idly by as the rubble falls.
Kurzel breaks the familiarity of seeing Law playing likeable or charming roles by allowing Husk to become the figure that you expect to see in the guise of Bob Matthews; grizzled, disjointed, and occasionally hot headed to the point of mistakes. As a mirror to Husk, Matthews is clean-shaven, confident, and assured with his vision to transform America into the Aryan Nation by force, with Hoult equally playing against type in a way that feels disarming in a way that takes a few scenes to truly reconcile with the notion that Hoult is embodying such a brutish figure. Unlike Law’s inhabited performance as Husk, I wasn’t as convinced by Hoult’s turn, leaving me to feel that the actor was unable to take himself to the level of darkness that Matthews required.
Yet, the notion that Hoult never really feels like a threat or that he is capable of extreme harm amplifies the point of The Order. As Matthews, Hoult needs to make you feel comfortable, like he’s that no trouble Nazi sidling up next to you at the bar looking for a harmless drink. You don’t question it because why would you? He’s causing no harm right now, so why would you think he might cause harm in the future? But a Nazi is a Nazi, and it’s with the democratic art of filmmaking that Kurzel is doing his bit to stamp out this rising threat.
In less assured hands than Kurzel’s, Zach Baylin and Gary Gerhardt’s script (adapting Kevin Flynn’s book The Silent Brotherhood) would feel generic and formulaic, but instead Kurzel uses their script as a loose template rather than a strict guide which allows him to employ his now trademark style of slow-build tension where he adds layer upon layer of metaphorical and thematic questioning about the state of the world. This is all underpinned by another pulsing, heart rate skipping score by Jed Kurzel and piano wire tight editing from Nick Fenton.
The Order may not be as unsettling as Nitram, yet it does manage to subvert the familiar aspects of the thriller genre by forcing the audience to sit with the prominence of Nazism in our modern world. With both films you can feel the shaking aftermath of Kurzel waking in fright from yet another sleep disrupting panic attack born from the unanswerable question of how you are supposed to live a normal life when all you can think about is the many ways that hate and violence continue to be normalised as part of our daily existence.
Director: Justin Kurzel
Cast: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan
Writers: Zach Baylin, Gary Gerhardt, (based on the novel The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn)
Producers: Stuart Ford, Bryan Haas, Justin Kurzel, Jude Law
Music: Jed Kurzel
Cinematographer: Adam Arkapaw
Editor: Nick Fenton