The Order (2024)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: On paper, Justin Kurzel's 'The Order,' is a fairly basic thriller about an FBI agent tracking down a white-supremacist terror group. But the film creates a constant feeling of violence bubbling beneath the surface which gives it an unusually haunting reverence.
  
  Firstly, that comes from the vivid characterisation of Zach Baylin's script and the magnetic lead performances. Rather than racing around and carelessly attacking his subjects, the group's leader Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) spends most of the film meticulously planning and building relationships with co-conspirators and family, and that makes his evil feel completely grounded in reality - and all the more dangerous as a result. Meanwhile, like any good Michael Mann character, lead agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) is a lonely obsessive whose role has had deep personal costs, so you desperately long for him to succeed and find the inner peace that he's sorely missing.
  
  Surrounded by the evocative backdrop of the Pacific Northwest and Jed Kurzel's plaintive score, their respective demons and rivalry may always be present, but they only explode into confrontation a few times. As such, when things do finally erupt in a (literal) ball of flames at the end, whilst there is some cathartic release, what will stay with you is a feeling of dread and unease - a fact only confounded by the current rise of the far-right across the globe.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Its effect is more contemplative than hugely impactful or ground-breaking, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
  
  VERDICT: It may be another thriller about catching white supremacists, but Justin Kurzel's 'The Order,' is a film with violence bubbling away beneath its surface, and its effect is brilliantly haunting.

  Like?

  0 member like this review.