In 1983, there’s a series of bank robberies and armored car heists in the Pacific northwest. When FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) begins to investigate, he quickly comes to the conclusion that the crimes are being committed by a white supremacist organization which plans to use the money (and counterfeit cash it is printing) to bankroll an armed rebellion against the United States.
That’s the story behind “The Order,” a true crime movie that follows the efforts of Husk, local police officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), and FBI agent Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett) to track down the criminals and put a stop to their efforts.
The real-life group, known as The Order, was a breakaway sect of Aryan Nations, an organization which operated under the guise of a church run by Richard Butler, who preached extreme antisemitic, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist garbage.
I first learned about The Order when I read Stephen Singular’s 1987 book, “Talked to Death,” about the 1983 murder of Alan Berg. Berg was a popular talk show host on KOA/Denver, a station with a signal that reached most of the western half of the US. To call Berg’s style confrontational would be an understatement, particularly when it came to bigots, who he argued with and insulted on a regular basis. It made for often-compelling radio, but ended horribly when Berg was shot multiple times in his driveway by a member of The Order.
Berg’s story was only slightly fictionalized by Eric Bogosian in his 1987 play, “Talk Radio,” which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Oliver Stone’s film version came out the next year, with Bogosian reprising the role.
This movie, “The Order,” begins with Berg (Marc Maron) taking on yet another racist conspiracy theorist before moving to the broader story of Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), the charismatic yet toxic leader of the group. Listening to him spew hatred — of Jews, Black people, and anyone else not white enough — to his followers is doubly depressing because domestic terrorists like them are not only still around, but thriving in the Trump era. Remember, it was those kinds of disgusting beliefs that led Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to bomb the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, 1995.
Director Justin Kurzel and writer Zach Baylin do an excellent job showing us not only the frustration of Husk and Bowen in getting others in law enforcement to see the danger of Mathews and his cult — but also the risk of the pursuit. Their casting of British actor Jude Law might seem odd, but he pulls it off very well, with a serious, quiet intensity and nary a trace of an English accent.
“The Order” tells a gripping story from our not-so-distant past and serves as a reminder of the dangers still alive in America’s present.
I give it an 8 out of 10. Now playing in theaters.