Vertical has just sent over the trailer to their official Venice and TIFF selection — the tense thriller The Order. Justin Kurzel (Macbeth, The History of the Kelly Gang, Assassin’s Creed) is in the director’s chair. Based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s novel The Silent Brotherhood, The Order stars Jude Law (Closer, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), Nicholas Hoult (Superman, Renfield, Mad Max: Fury Road), and Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One, X-Men: Apocalypse, Mud).

The official synopsis reads,
“For over a year, a series of bold daylight bank robberies and armored car heists leaves law enforcement baffled and the public panicked throughout the Pacific Northwest. As the attacks become increasingly violent, FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) becomes convinced that the robberies are the work of a domestic terrorist gang that plan to use the loot to finance an armed uprising against the U.S. government. 

Based on a true story, The Order follows Husk and his team into the tangled world of white supremacists to try to head off a violent uprising that could shatter the nation. As the militia builds a war chest of over $4 million, Husk pursues the malevolent racist Bob Mathews to a final bloody standoff that will go down in U.S. history.”

Law plays “a lone FBI agent stationed in the sleepy, picturesque town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, who believes the crimes were not the work of traditional criminals. He thinks the disturbance is the work of domestic terrorists with a charismatic leader (Hoult).” Alison Oliver, Odessa Young, Sebastian Pigott, George Tchortov, Victor Slezak, and Marc Maron also star as primary cast members.

“I am looking forward to working with Vertical on the release of The Order,” Kurzel told Deadline. “It was a privilege getting to work with such an extraordinary cast and crew on such a thrilling script by Zach Baylin, a story from the past speaking so directly with the present.”

Our EIC, Chris Bumbray, got to view the movie at TIFF and glowed about it in his review, “Kurzel made a pretty slick thriller that would play well in theatres. It’s lean and mean enough that, in another era, it would have been a big-budget studio film. Thrillers like this used to be a lot more common, so it’s refreshing to see a throwback like this, which reminds me (in the best ways) of the kinds of studio-made thrillers I loved watching growing up in the nineties.”

The post Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult star in the tense trailer for The Order appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: A burnt-out FBI agent (Jude Law) tries to shut down a right-wing militia run by a white supremacist (Nicholas Hoult) who’s planning an armed insurrection.

REVIEW: The Order is a slickly made, true-crime thriller that tells a pretty compelling story; in the mid-eighties, a group calling themselves The Order pulled off a series of violent robberies and also bombed synagogues and porn theatres, all of which was inspired by a book called “The Turner Diaries”, which was written by the leader of the National Alliance, which was one of the most powerful Neo Nazi organizations in the United States. 

In The Order, Nicholas Hoult, in a role that casts him way against type, plays Robert Jay Mathews, who put together a violent, heavily armed militia that began carrying out a series of brutal assassinations and robberies. In the film, this puts them in the crosshairs of Jude Law’s Agent Husk, who has experience taking down chapters of the KKK and the Cosa Nostra but is badly burnt out, and an alcoholic chain-smoker recovering from a heart attack who’s been put out to pasture in a quiet field office. His investigation of The Order teams him with a young deputy played by Tye Sheridan, who grew up with many of the members and is the only one in his department who views them as a credible threat.

The film marks a change of pace for Justin Kurzel in that it’s a relatively commercial thriller done in the vein of a solid nineties flick, which seems primed to find him a much wider audience than his recent (good) movies, The True History of the Kelly Gang and Nitram. Jude Law has a strong contemporary role and seems to relish playing a hard-boiled cop, with him nailing the driven and obsessive Husk. A seen-it-all veteran with many skeletons in his closet, he’s well paired with Sheridan, whose wide-eyed deputy still believes in humanity and thinks he can make a difference.

While this may sound like it’s comprised wholly of cop movie cliches, Kurzel’s craft is impeccable, with his staging of several impressive action sequences. At the same time, his brother Jed Kurzel contributes an atmospheric score that is being singled out in many of the movie’s reviews (for good reason). The performances are great, with Hoult chilling in that the movie portrays his cult leader-style antagonist as charismatic and intelligent. He expertly exploits the resentments his members feel to build a deadly, lawless organization whose violent legacy can be felt to this day. 

In addition to Law, Hoult, and Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett also impresses as a field agent colleague of Husk’s, whose own rage against the racism of The Order memorably gets the better of her in one sequence. Plus, there’s Marc Maron in a small but memorable role as a Jewish radio DJ named Alan Berg, whose eagerness to confront racists put a target on his back.

The Order is set to come out via Vertical at some point, and hopefully, it gets a decent theatrical push, as Kurzel made a pretty slick thriller that would play well in theatres. It’s lean and mean enough that, in another era, it would have been a big-budget studio film. Thrillers like this used to be a lot more common, so it’s refreshing to see a throwback like this, which reminds me (in the best ways) of the kinds of studio-made thrillers I loved watching growing up in the nineties. 

The Order

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The post The Order (TIFF) Review: Jude Law is riveting in this thriller appeared first on JoBlo.